Regardless of your political party or belief system, many people believe social media and certain “news” sources are filled with questionable takes on current events that can only be described as “fake” news. While most Americans believe they can spot these fake stories and won’t fall for what publications are trying to spin, a new troubling study cautions that most Americans are wrong. In reality, the majority of us aren’t able to accurately spot fake news.
CNN’s Ryan Prior has reported that “as many as 3 in 4 Americans overestimate their ability to spot false headlines — and the worse they are at it, the more likely they are to share fake news.”
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and involved a group of more than 8,200 men and women who were shown various headlines in a “Facebook-like” feed and then asked to determine which stories were true. The majority of people studied were not able to spot the fake news — even though as many as 90% of study participants believed they had an above-average ability to do so.
