Boomers are more susceptible to fake news

Saturday night dinner

Wind bristling against the window. Trees swaying from side to side violently. Sun is setting. You could see the birds hurrying past their nests. Like any other normal household, the family of four is ready for dinner on a Saturday night.

Dinner is being served. The plates come shuffling in and out with the flurry of hands like clockwork. First the appetizer, the main course, then the dessert.

Finally, someone spoke. An educated, dignified, retired electrical engineer with a grey beard pan his gaze slowly towards the two younger companions on the table. They looked at each other. They knew what was coming and helplessly gave a little shrug.

‘Hilary Clinton runs a paedophile ring! They have the whole committee caught red handed in a pizza parlour down at D.C. There are even pictures from the news outlet.’

A variation of these statements can be heard during dinner parties, family gatherings, seen on your aunties’ Facebook page, and alarmingly increasing in frequency. This phenomenon was not appropriately described until Trump coined it as fake news in 2016. It has stuck with us since then.

Fake news and Spin

Misinformation campaigns have existed throughout human history. Politicians, tobacco companies, drug companies, businessmen, conmen have all had their fair shares and guilt.

Today, however, it is much more problematic. We are seeing campaigns running on lies and falsehoods than the more conventional approach, spin - providing a biased interpretation of an event to influence public opinion about certain affairs. Rather than affecting the whole population cross sectionally, it appears that specific age group are affected disproportionately – the Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, currently between 56-74 years old.

This begs the question - Are Boomers more susceptible to fake news than the rest of the population?

Social media

Social media is an important variable. It can’t be overlooked when we are comparing this and previous misinformation campaigns. It is an independent factor and exclusively relevant. Drawing analogy from past events don’t quite paint the picture. It would be underestimating the power of the platform.

Social media has transformed the fabric of society that we live in. It has given us tools to build communities more readily. We are more engaged in lives of those we care. We receive more updates on each other’s life. We see the things they share, the things they like, the things they are interested in. We are now actually a call away from seeing our loved ones. This though, comes at a price.

The companies running the platform are free to use. Anyone and everyone can sign up. In order to generate profit and keep stakeholders happy, they cede part of the platform to advertisers. The advertisers target their audience based on the data collected from the platform. The data that was collected runs through an algorithm to keep users on the platform. The algorithm keeps users by tailoring their needs according to host of variables and past behaviours. This translated into user experience means everyone has a unique perspective of the world around them. For example, if you are liberal leaning, your page would likely have more AOC’s video, Black Lives Matter movement, news articles on how Russia stole the election, etc. If you are into video games, you might get more updates on the latest available games. If you are into cats, there will be more cat videos, more cat pictures. The users are basically pigeonholed into their fantasies where the world around look ideological more alike to those they hold, less diverse and more homogenous.

For a society, this is far from ideal. A truly functioning society is when people from each community interact and share opposing views. They may not see eye to eye on some topics, but they don’t necessarily want to demean each other! I like to use this video of John McCain defending Obama as an example. When all is said and done, the resulting communities become more radicalised as the algorithm cater to each specific needs of the group.

We are more connected than ever yet so disconnected from reality at the same time.

Drinking bleach treats Covid

Boomers are more susceptible to cognitive declines as part of ageing process. Ageing is part of life and there is no escaping it. Important abilities such as episodic memory and abstract reasoning peak early (in the 20s and 30s) and then steadily decline. To compensate, they rely on heuristics.

Heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgements quickly and efficiently.

That said, it is not just the Boomers that rely on heuristics when it comes to evaluating information. People of all ages rely on heuristics, including young people. One such mental shortcuts - Repetition. Multiple exposures to headlines make the information more believable than single exposure.

‘Drinking bleach treats Covid!’

If you see this frequently enough, you start believing it. But wait a second, this does not make sense. Drinking bleach is not going to treat Covid no matter how many times I see this, you may say. And you are right.

Repetition inflates perceptions of truth to the same extent in young and older people. The difference is that better cognitive ability makes young people less reliant on heuristics than the older population. In other words, drinking bleach does not treat Covid for you because first, your mental processes are still intact; second, the message is not repeated sufficiently; third, well, keep reading!

Aren’t older people wiser?

With age comes experience, with experience comes a lifetime of knowledge. This is true and is reflected in studies - older people have better ability in categorizing true and false headlines at first glance. They outperform younger counterparts when variables like repetition and memory failure are removed.

However, they fall prey to fake news when repetition comes into play. Repeat the message enough and their cognition fail them. They revert to heuristics and thus, have trouble differentiating what is true and false. At this point, you could argue both Boomers and young people are equally susceptible to fake news. The lack of knowledge base by almost negates the fall in cognition with Boomers.

Social changes

‘They’re alone, relatively wealthy, alienated, and stuck in places where they don’t know anybody and feel angry.’ – Kevin Munger, a political scientist who studies the online habits of older American and their effect on politics.

As older people lose social ties in reality with age, their interpersonal trust increases. They have more trust in families, friends, relatives, and strangers. This trust translated virtually meant that they are more likely to believe information or news shared by friends. In the real world, when scrolling through their Facebook page, it is difficult to disengage mentally from that ‘safe zone’ (where all friends added are people they have vetted through, and that they trust), and engage their cognitive self to analytically sieve through each piece of information objectively.

Moreover, older people have different priority when using technology. They prioritize more on passing along generational knowledge and moral messages with technology. They see technology as a means to connect with the younger generation. They overlook details as long as the core message is intact. For instance, they are likelier to share information provided that it aligns with the narrative/ message they are trying to convey. (I mentioned this is my recent article - Ant Group’s failed IPO, where I argued that guardians and the society at large create narratives to shape the way we view the world)

This, however, does not suggest that older people spread news without scrutinizing the sources.

Analytic thinking comes with age

Analytic thinking capability increases with age.

‘Analytic thinkers discerned fake from real headlines even when the stories aligned with their politics.’

Though older people may likely offset motivated reasoning with analytic thinking, they still fall prey to misleading content e.g. manipulated photos, due to digital illiteracy. This is the third point I was teasing at up earlier. The projected message alongside manipulated images make it look subjectively more believable for older people. This brings us to the final argument.

Digital illiteracy

Boomers (born between 1946-1964) – 56-74 years old

Gen X (born between 1965-1980) – 40-55 years old

Gen Y/ Millennials (born between 1981-1996) – 24-39 years old

Gen Z (born between 1997-2015) – 8-23 years old

The following is a sum of sweeping statements and stereotypes. They are nonetheless applicable to majority of the population. By technology, I am referring to smartphones and social media use.

Gen Z grew up with technology, they are conversant with iPads before they knew how to write;

The Millennials adopted technology around adolescence;

Gen X embraced technology during early adulthood;

The Boomers were latest to the party and have only increased its usage in the past decade.

Manipulated images are difficult to spot for digital natives, let alone older people that have only recently acquainted themselves to the platform.

‘People exhibit a bias to accept images as real, so one third of manipulated photos go undetected. The ability to distinguish real from fake photos declines with age. When viewing altered real-world scenes, older people miss added or removed objects, distorted angles, and inconsistent shadows.’

Study shows that people are more likely to share both true and false news if accompanied by pictures.

TL; DR

How to spread fake news step by step formula.

Fake news + repeated once = Low

Fake news + repeated ten times = Moderately low

Fake news + repeated ten times + image = Moderate

Fake news + repeated ten times + image + young audience = Moderate

Fake news + repeated ten times + image + older audience = Moderately high

Fake news + repeated ten times + image + older audience & friends = High

Where does that leave us now?

Drinking bleach does not treat Covid

In the foreseeable future with artificial intelligence in the near horizon coupled with more sophisticated technology likely spun out as second order innovation, the fake news phenomenon experienced today would likely look trivial in the scheme of things.

Undoubtedly, new technology will arise. Deep fakes to begin with, will increase rates of fake news. These technologies will have been developed to advance human race as a whole. At the same time, place those unprotected ones in a very vulnerable spot, primed to be taken advantage of by ill-intentioned actors.

Future interventions and measures developed to safeguard these communities would have to tackle the root cause – Bridging the social changes and the gaps in digital illiteracy.

On a lighter note, next time you hear some Boomer advocating any suspiciously looking, dodgy sounding piece of ‘drinking bleach treats Covid because of its exceedingly potent active agent sodium hypochlorite, the way it interacts with the virus through a lock and key mechanism - you know you should give it a go’ advice he/she heard from the Internet; take a deep breath, have some empathy, correct them appropriately, send them this article, know that ultimately they have your best interest at heart when conveying the message!