Older people more likely to share fake news on Facebook, study finds

Researchers suggest over-65s may lack skills to determine veracity of online news

Older people are almost four times more likely to have shared fake news on Facebook than the younger generation, according to research published in the journal Science.

On average, American Facebook users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as those aged between 18 and 29, researchers from NYU and Princeton found in the study, which also concluded sharing such false content was "a relatively rare activity".