Young People Better At Telling Fact From Opinion Than Older People, Study Finds

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that Americans over 50 are worse than younger people at telling facts from opinions.

The study gave participants 10 statements, five each of fact and opinion. Younger Americans correctly identified both the facts and the opinions at higher rates than older Americans did, reports The Atlantic. Forty-four percent of younger people identified all five opinions as opinions, but only 26 percent of older people did. Meanwhile, 18-to-29-year-olds performed more than twice as well as those 65 and over. Only 17 percent of those 65+ identified all five facts as factual statements.

This research explores the idea that younger people who are more “digital savvy” might be exposed and/or more susceptible to misinformation because they are online all the time. However, the real correlation with poor performance is exposure to television news, writes The Atlantic, which has fallen off among young people but remains very high among older people.