When it came to sharing fake news on Facebook during the 2016 election, no age group was quite as active as those aged 65 and older, according to a new study.
The study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, quantifies how aggressive seniors were in spreading misinformation, though the findings suggest that sharing such stories was relatively rare.
On average, American Facebook users aged 65 and older posted seven times as many articles from fake news websites as adults 29 and younger, according to the study. And that was true regardless of ideology, education level or political affiliation: Older users just tended to share misinformation more.
But before you blame America’s seniors for distorting political discourse, note the study’s main finding: Sharing articles from such disreputable sources was actually pretty uncommon.
