Finding 10
While adults are concerned about young people’s beliefs in conspiracy theories, they don’t prioritise it over other pressures on young people.
Summary:
The adults in our research mirrored the trends of wider research in their growing concern about conspiracy beliefs among young people.
School staff and parents believe that children are more likely to talk about and believe conspiracy theories than they used to be.
Neither parents nor school staff place conspiracy beliefs in their top five concerns for young people in schools currently.
Although young people were talking about conspiracy theories with their parents, parents did not think this was necessarily because they believed in them. Parents did, however, think that young people were more like to believe in conspiracy theories now than 10 years ago.
The adults in our research mirrored the trends of wider research in their growing concern about conspiracy beliefs amongst young people.1 Some 50% of school staff agree that conspiracy theories are being talked about more by pupils in their school than they used to be. And 63% of parents believe that children between the ages of 11 and 18 are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than children of the same age 10 years ago.
However, while concerns around conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation were found across both our qualitative and quantitative data, it should also be seen in the context of a wide range of concerns that parents and school staff held. Neither parents nor school staff place conspiracy beliefs in their top five concerns for young people in schools currently. They did, however, select issues which may intersect or influence conspiracy belief including; mental health, poor behaviour and attendance.
Given the rise in anxiety in young people, it is worth considering possible links between wellbeing and conspiracy content.2 This was brought out in the evidence heard from Chris Martin, who noted that:
For us, the primary impact [of general trends in internet activity] is that you've got a lot of young people dealing with unnecessary anxiety. [Online content] is certainly driving anxiety in young people, and we've got a high level of misdiagnosis coming through...and there's probably a provoking factor around suicidality. Those are the kind of really hard edged difficulties to it.
Chris Martin, CEO, The Mix, Commission Evidence Session
Some 27% of parents claimed that their child (or one of their children) had mentioned their belief in a conspiracy theory to them, and according to these parents, the two most common ways their children heard about these conspiracy theories was through friends at their school (55%) or social media (55%).
Graph 10: As far as you know, where did your child hear about this conspiracy theory? Select any which apply [Parents whose children have mentioned a conspiracy theory to them]
Across our qualitative research, there was often a sense from parents that their children simply had far more access to information than they did at a similar age, and in some cases even now.
“I actually think they’re [children] probably getting [news] more instant[ly] than what we’re getting… She knew Trump was shot before I did, and that was because it was reverberating around the TikTok…”
“I have got a 13-year-old boy. So the fear of the influence that somebody like Andrew Tate could have on my son was real.”
Although young people were talking about conspiracy theories with their parents, parents did not think this was necessarily because they believed in it, nor did parents always report these discussions to be a concern to them. Among these parents whose children spoke to them about a conspiracy theory, 20% said their child ‘definitely believed’ the conspiracy theory and a further 37% say they ‘probably believed’ it. Of the parents whose child had spoken to them about a belief in a conspiracy theory, 46% would consider the conspiracy theory their child(ren) mentioned to them harmful – 13% of parents in total.
This suggests that young people, similarly to the way school staff report their behaviour in schools, may be raising conspiracy theories with parents for a range of reasons, including out of curiosity, as part of a conversation or facetiously.
There was some discussion around the lack of critical thought employed by young people towards the content they were consuming, and whether it was conspiracy belief, misinformation or disinformation. This sits in a much wider context. As referenced elsewhere in this report, conspiracy content can cause harm as well as being an indicator of wider societal problems. Here, it is likely that conspiracy belief is indicating a wider problem around criticality and critical media literacy more broadly.
“The upshot is very little works [in reducing conspiracy belief in adults]. The most successful is critical thinking in general. So if we want to be proactive, we need a curriculum fit for digital age. Every subject has a role to play. All subjects need to talk a lot more about why we believe what we do in our subject, what is our evidence base rather than just deposit knowledge. We have to talk a lot more about why we believe this and we don’t believe that.”
“[Young people are] in an environment of epistemic chaos in which they’re not able to ascertain what is true or what is not.”
“It’s like that lad [Jay Slater] that went missing in Tenerife a couple of weeks ago. My son came downstairs and said ‘Oh, look what I found on social media’ and it was a picture of from somewhere, he’s alive…and I said well, ‘don’t believe everything that you see because it’s, you know, where’s it come from?’”