Who is More Vulnerable to Fake News?

A Spanish research investigation in 2019 by the Luca de Tena Foundation and Facebook discovered in Spain, the most vulnerable groups in the population to disinformation were young people and the unemployed.

What is surprising is that these results show that disinformation was just as potent a threat before the pandemic, an international event which is often seen as an accelerator and breeding ground for disinformation.

The study on disinformation and vulnerability shed light on the sectors of society that were most subject to false information. It found that young people were the most vulnerable to disinformation and that, in particular, groups of adolescents were most likely to believe fake news. Aside from young people, those with lower levels of studies and the unemployed were another high-risk group for disinformation.

As can be predicted, economic wealth, stability and education reduce vulnerability to disinformation.

There is also a strong correlation between those who spent more than three hours a day on Facebook and a higher degree of vulnerability to disinformation.

Social media has allowed a lot of fake news to be easily shared, in fact, a false story is 70 per cent more likely to be retweeted than real news. Often, fake news may be shared and forwarded as a joke or for fun, but the effects of sharing such disinformation should not be underestimated.

What can we do to combat fake news? We can ask ourselves some simple questions: where does this information come from? Is it useful or important to share it? Will sharing it helps us deal with the situation better?

Nowadays, with huge leaps in technology and AI, disinformation and its propagation will become a real and imminent threat. False content can be easily generated and spread, and is becoming increasingly harder to detect. With the rise of deep fake audio, photo and video media, many are subject to the difficulty in distinguishing what is true and what is false, and the need to be equipped with the tools to discriminate against disinformation is becoming more critical for the society of tomorrow.