Individuals with high digital literacy are less likely to fall for fake news, but no less willing to share those

Sirlin, Nathaniel, Ziv Epstein, Antonio A. Arechar, and David G. Rand. 2021. “Digital Literacy and Susceptibility to Misinformation.” PsyArXiv. August 21. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7rb2m

Abstract: It has been widely argued that social media users with low digital literacy – who lack fluency with basic technological concepts related to the internet – are more likely to fall for online misinformation, but surprisingly little research has examined this association empirically. In a large survey experiment involving true and false news posts about politics and COVID-19, we find that digital literacy is indeed an important predictor of the ability to tell truth from falsehood when judging headline accuracy. However, digital literacy is not a significant predictor of users’ intentions to share true versus false headlines. This observation reinforces the disconnect between accuracy judgments and sharing intentions, and suggests that interventions beyond merely improving digital literacy are likely needed to reduce the spread of misinformation online.