More than 40% of teens can't tell difference between authentic online medical content and misinformation

A new study shows that teens have a hard time distinguishing between fake and true health information. Only 48% of participants trusted trustworthy health messages more than fake ones. Meanwhile, 41% considered fake and truthful neutral messages equally trustworthy, and 11% considered truthful neutral health messages less trustworthy than fake ones, Frontiers in Psychology writes.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an explosion of health misinformation," said principal investigator Dr. Radomir Masaryk of Comenius University. "Because teenagers use the Internet a lot, we usually expect that they already know how to approach and evaluate information online, but the opposite seems to be true."

Most of the research on message validity has focused on adults. In the new study, however, Masaryk and colleagues found out whether teens can handle a lot of fake health news online.

Health misinformation is a serious public health problem, with fake health news increasingly appearing on social media platforms in the past few years. Previous research has shown that online health messages are largely incomplete and inaccurate and contain potentially harmful information, the study authors said. 

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