A study by the Association e-Enfance / 3018 of 1,049 young people aged 11 to 18, conducted by the Toluna Harris Interactive Institute, reveals a profound transformation in their relationship with information. Social networks now play a central role in accessing news, with the TikTok social network as the main gateway. At the same time, a large majority of young people say they are regularly exposed to false information, and express a growing lack of confidence in the reliability of content.
The study reveals a generation that pays close attention to the news and is aware of the risks of manipulation, but which nevertheless obtains its information via digital platforms dominated by the logic of recommendations and algorithmic flows, where information constantly rubs shoulders with entertainment and misleading content.
Social networks and AI are playing an increasingly important role in young people's exposure to current affairs. The direct search for information on social networks already concerns 20 % of 11-13 year-olds.
In the Aged 16-18, 69 % say that social networks are their primary channel of exposure to information.
When they are looking for information on these platforms, 70 % of teenagers turn to TikTok including more than one in two (55%) in the 11-13 age group which is by far the main gateway to the news, far ahead of the other social networks.
This is all the more worrying given that access to social networks is, in principle, free. forbidden to under 13s.
Contrary to certain preconceived ideas, teenagers are not naïve to misinformation. 73 % of young people say they regularly spot false information, from all sources and 60 % say they “check” the content they consult.
Among the information they most often identify as misleading, a third concerns political content.
Despite this vigilance, teenagers are expressing a growing lack of confidence in the reliability of information. 81 % of young people say they no longer know who to trust in the face of the increasing amount of false information.
More than one young person in two (55%) also believes that it is becoming difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood, and 53 % say that misinformation ultimately reduces their desire for information.
56 % of teenagers say they trust information provided by generative artificial intelligences, such as conversational assistants.
At the same time, 40 % admit that they rarely, if ever, question information from an AI., This underlines the growing importance of these technologies in the information ecosystem of young people.
