The good news for the 2.38 billion people who use Facebook: Most Facebook users did not share any fake news articles during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, according to a recent study but the small number who did were mostly Republican Americans over the age of 65. The findings suggest the need for “renewed attention” to educate “particular vulnerable individuals,” such as aging baby boomers, about fake news or misleading information that appears to resemble a fact-checked news article published by a legitimate and fact-based media outlet, researchers said.


So why are Republican baby boomers more likely to share fake news on Facebook? One theory: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled. (Case in point: the variety of scams that have had success with older Americans by preying on their lack of familiarity with how computers and technology work.)

Younger Americans who grew up with the internet, regardless of their political leanings, tend to be less overwhelmed by stories that cross their news feeds on Facebook and Twitter TWTR, -2.36% and more adept at spotting telltale signs of fake news. “Because of technology, we are inundated by information,” Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University, told NPR last year. “We just don’t have time to separate the facts from the falsities. Even fact checkers don’t have time. A message can go viral before any serious truth filter has been applied. This leads to a positive feedback cycle.”

...

The results showed that 90% of these users actually did not share misleading or fake articles and only 8.5% shared one or more fake news articles. A plurality, 18%, of the Facebook users who shared the fake stories were both self-identified Republicans and over the age of 65, the authors concluded, and these individuals shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles as respondents in the youngest age group, ranging in age from 18 to 29.