Older users share more misinformation. Your guess why might be wrong

technologyreview.com

3 points·glitcher··3 comments

My guess why, also based on no data whatsoever:

1. Older people grew up in an era where news sources were trusted as platforms that reported facts. But now most news sources are optimized for user engagement, which are most effective when delivering divisiveness, outrage, and fear mongering.

2. Older people have more time to watch the news, and thus the effects of prolonged exposure to such negativity has more of a chance to shape their views.

But who knows what the real truth is without more research?

Another factor may be that older people have seen so much nonsense that they've become more skeptical of the "official" narrative. I know this has happened with me. I don't go in for conspiracy theories but I can see how similarly disillusioned people with less developed critical thinking skills could be tempted by them.

I've become skeptical of everyone's narrative, if anything, but why would a person realize the official narrative is usually a lie, and then go on to trust someone else or some other group blindly? My guess would be binary thinking (it's always gotta be liberals vs conservatives for every argument), the misapplication of the law of the excluded middle (maybe there's a multitude of answers on a scale of correctness, not just two: right and wrong), and other fallacies and things like that.

The article actually doesn't answer the question, it's just a mix of random words and ideas about why it could be that older people share more misinformation with some incredulity towards 'ageism'.

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