The next speaker in this session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is Ben Lyons, whose interest is in asymmetries in misinformation engagement across demographics, with a particular focus on older adults in the US. The US population above 65 years is rapidly growing, and these are also comparatively active voters; in every US election, the majority of voters are older than 50 years, for instance.
Such older adults are also most likely to share untrustworthy content online, in the US and elsewhere; this has been documented by study after study over the past years. Paradoxically, however, some studies also show that older adults are also most likely to pick out problematic information: how can these findings be reconciled?
Older adults are exposed to more problematic content; their discernment also increases with age, though. Political sophistication and partisanship matter here: most measures focus on political misinformation, and older adults filter the ‘truth’ through partisan perspectives, which are stronger in these cohorts.
Methodological concerns also need to be considered here. Survey-based research tends to expose participants to false news which is balanced in slant, but the actual supply of misinformation in the United States is not balanced: there is an oversupply of right-wing misinformation here. Such asymmetric supply may also simply address an asymmetric demand.
If such slant is taken into account, then older adults who appear to be more discerning simply turn out to be Republican partisans who strongly reject false news stories favouring Democrats; this isn’t really discernment, but simply partisan entrenchment. Similarly, the link between age and exposure to problematic content is driven by older Republicans, who are the major consumers of mis- and disinformation in the United States. Media trust is also polarised by age and party, or course.
Older Republicans are therefore especially susceptible to mis- and disinformation, and this is a pattern that appears both in survey and trace data. As most dubious online content leans right, it intensifies engagement especially amongst such older conservatives.
