Gen Zers might be the most digitally savvy group on the planet, but that doesn’t make them immune from believing — and spreading — false information online.
That’s a big problem for everyone, Google executive Beth Goldberg tells CNBC Make It.
“I do think Gen Z’s susceptibility to misinformation is more important than other cohorts. Definitely,” says Goldberg, the head of research and development at Jigsaw, a Google unit created in 2010 to study and monitor online abuse, harassment and disinformation.
Gen Z is “just so online,” Goldberg says, citing a recent study backed by Google on explanations for young people’s susceptibility to misinformation. It can lead to “information overload,” where the sheer volume of available information can make it harder to discern fact from fiction, she adds.
More than half of Gen Z’s members get most of their news directly from social media, and younger generations are much more likely to believe online influencers over other sources of information, research shows. These traits aren’t necessarily unique to Gen Z, but they’re more prevalent among that cohort, Goldberg says.
And more than half of Gen Z members spend more than four hours per day on social media, nearly twice the percentage of all U.S. adults who are online that much, according to a 2022 Morning Consult survey.
“You have this, sort of, amplification [of misinformation] — not just of Gen Z being susceptible as consumers, but also then propagating that misinformation as...
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