Finding 9
Despite this trust, when it comes to conspiracy belief, adulthood doesn’t equate to expertise.
Summary:
We found no evidence that belief in conspiracy theories is a unique problem among young people. Parents are very unsure of this area, with some occupying a conspiracy theory hinterland themselves.
Parents also access a lot of online information and are unsure how to fact-check sources.
Young people in our research reported that their relationships with adults have also been negatively impacted by adults’ conspiracy beliefs.
More research in this space is needed to understand both the implications for young people and how schools can work with families in order to address this challenge.
Although this research has focused on schools, belief in conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation is not a ‘young person problem’ – far from it. We found no evidence that this is a unique problem amongst young people, and in fact found that many of the trends we saw in young people had direct corollaries in the adult population.
While the high levels of trust in adults, particularly parents, provides us with a particular set of potential solutions or interventions to support young people, it is not unproblematic. Subsequent findings suggest that adults lack both confidence and expertise in this space and keenly feel their own susceptibility to conspiracy theories and disinformation, which creates other challenges in validating young people’s beliefs.
Our research found that young people reported that their relationships with adults have also been negatively impacted by the adult’s conspiracy beliefs. Some 40% of pupils said they had encountered relatives believing information they would consider a conspiracy theory.
Furthermore, 27% of pupils had experienced a relationship becoming difficult because of the adult relative’s opinions. Examples of this also appeared in our qualitative research, whereby pupils shared the conspiracy beliefs held by their relatives that they had encountered:
“My uncle thinks Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings. We just let him talk about it until he shuts up.”
“[my grandmother thinks] Covid was China’s way of dominating us.”
Indeed, parents are very unsure of this area – with some occupying a conspiracy theory hinterland themselves. They too access a lot of online information and are unsure of how to fact-check sources. Likewise, they are susceptible to the wide narratives that drive conspiracy belief. In our focus groups, parents (and sometimes school staff) expressed deep uncertainty about conspiracy belief.
I mean, I'm open to them looking at conspiracy theories and talking about it, because my husband believes 9/11 was a conspiracy… But then I would say to the kids... Let's look at all the stuff and you can have your own opinion.
Parent, North East Focus Group
Parents also expressed concern that misinformation and disinformation was an issue, and a real sense it was getting worse, but they generally felt that there is often insufficient support for them, not only as parents, but also more broadly as consumers of information.
When it comes to the Internet… You don't feel supported at all. Everything's... it's like a black hole.
Parent, North East Focus Group
There was a desire for interventions and increased support for improving parental understanding of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation. Parents were positive about examples of training, such as one parent who told a group their child’s school had sessions on online safety for students and parents alike.
“I think that’s one of the things that they’re [the school] really hot on. They really do support the kids to do that, to challenge things, to not take things at face value, and how to find further information…I would say that it’s pretty much across the curriculum, but… that they do a lot of work around it in English…but also PHSE which they have on a daily basis, [it is what their] form tutor group is based around”
“The school do quite a lot with them on this, certainly if there’s anything like a particularly relevant topic at the time – you mentioned about the WhatsApp groups, they immediately addressed that in school and they usually use the [school] communication app to send information home to parents just to let them know that that there is a problem… they quite often put some little pointers in on how to have that conversation with the children, as well!
This all serves as a reminder that pupils are neither uniquely susceptible to conspiracy beliefs nor insulated from the conspiracy beliefs of adults. More research in this space is needed to understand both the implications for young people and how schools can work with families to address this challenge.