Democracy and trust: the troubling role of education in misinformation belief

Through a behavioral experiment, this Article examined the relationship between people’s education levels and their belief in misinformation on social media. The study found two dismaying correlations. First, higher education levels of respondents correlated with greater belief in misinformation, greater willingness to recommend negative action based on the misinformation, and greater willingness to share such information, even in the face of a warning label flagging the misinformation. Second, people’s greater usage of social media showed the same correlation. And the two factors overlapped and interacted detrimentally. Higher education levels did not save respondents with higher usage of social media from believing in misinformation. Instead, higher education levels worsened such belief. Use of nearly every major Internet platform—Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Parler—correlated with belief in misinformation. Only use of Twitter and YouTube did not. Because Internet platforms do not typically moderate defamation, or disparaging falsehoods about individuals (that do not otherwise violate the Internet platforms’ community standards for harassment, hate speech, or conspiracy theories), the results of our study suggest that social media are perpetuating a vicious cycle in which greater use of social media fosters greater belief in misinformation by individuals, who spread and amplify the misinformation even more.