Children and misinformation on social media
A recent research project has looked at school children's experiences on social media. Among other things, the researchers were surprised to discover that misinformation is a phenomenon that affects children, according to their new report, which is funded by TrygFonden. Schoolchildren are exposed daily to a media landscape that can mislead, misinform and influence their attitudes and trust in democracy.
Until now, there has been limited research-based knowledge about children aged 5-12 years.
The researchers in the SafeChilDe project investigated how children experience and react to what they perceive as misinformation on social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
Based on the results, the next step is to develop an online learning game that trains children to recognise and distinguish misinformation from truthful information.
- Children find encountering misinformation both fun and scary. The dual perspective makes it difficult for them to navigate the media landscape," says Associate Professor Lene Heiselberg from the Centre of Journalism and continues with an important point that misinformation among children has surprised the researchers:
- "Already from the age of 8, half of them encounter misinformation on a weekly basis - that's far more than we expected. Another insight we gained is how much children lean on parents when in doubt. This shows that we need to better equip parents to talk to their children about misinformation," emphasises Lene Heiselberg.
A major reason why children and young people today are exposed to large amounts of misinformation on global platforms is that these platforms do not take the necessary responsibility to moderate content and limit the spread of misinformation.
For example, influencers can expose children and young people to various types of misinformation - potentially without their parents being aware of it and with the risk of harmful consequences. It is therefore crucial to gain insight into how children themselves experience the encounter with misinformation. The researchers behind the current report funded by TrygFonden have four main conclusions (Read the report here).
1: Children experience a lot of misinformation online - especially on YouTube
Children encounter misinformation at an early age - especially on platforms where they spend a lot of time, such as YouTube. Barely one in three 5-12 year olds are familiar with the term 'misinformation', but 90% encounter content that they consider false or fraudulent. By the age of 8, about half of children report encountering misinformation on a weekly basis. The older children are, the more frequently they report experiencing misinformation.2: Misinformation can be both entertaining and scary
The content that children perceive as potential misinformation can take many different forms. Children find that misinformation can be fun and entertaining, but also scary or harmful. As a result, children react with curiosity as well as irritation, anger or fear. However, many children don't remember how they reacted the last time they saw something online that they judged to be misinformation. According to the children, misinformation is created and shared primarily to gain attention, to trick or tease others and for entertainment purposes.
3: Close relationships have a big impact on how children deal with misinformation
When children encounter content online that they are unsure is true or false, parents are an important support. Most children feel insecure about their own fact-checking abilities and report low knowledge of concrete methods such as source criticism or web searches. However, confidence in their ability to recognise misinformation grows with age and increased experience with social media.
4: AI-generated misinformation is mainly on the radar of older children
More than half of children are familiar with the term 'artificial intelligence' (AI), but it's mainly older children who are aware of and have experienced content that they believe is AI-generated. When asked how they determine whether something is created by AI, a fifth of children report that they asked a close relative, typically an adult, for advice. A similar proportion report that they were able to assess it themselves. Children rarely actively try to assess whether content is AI-generated misinformation, for example by seeking out other sources or reading the comments section.
The current report's recommendations read:
- Children should be equipped to understand, identify and resist misinformation in age-appropriate ways with early digital misinformation education in schools and daycare centres.
- Parents should be equipped to talk to their children about how misinformation is created and spread and how to fact-check because children often seek parental help.
- An educational approach to vulnerable children is necessary because misinformation can reinforce social inequalities.
The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from the Centre of Journalism, the Department of Design, Media and Educational Science and the Digital Democracy Centre (SDU Digital) at the University of Southern Denmark. The researchers behind the project are:
Freja Sørine Adler Berg, Lene Heiselberg, Thomas Enemark Lundtofte and Lena Frischlich.
The report's findings are based on a questionnaire survey in spring 2025 among 401 Danish children with an equal distribution of age, gender and region and a mobile ethnographic survey among 21 school children in 2024. The report is published as part of the project: "Safeguarding Children's Democratic Agency: Tools to Navigate Mis- and Disinformation on Social Media" (SafeChilDe)