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The Association between time spent on social media and fact-checking behaviors of adolescents
Date Issued
2025
Citation
Lee, K. L., Danielson, R. W., & Ramazan, O. (9 Aug 2025). The association between times spent on social media and fact-checking behaviors of adolescents. Annual Conference of American Psychological Association (APA) 2025, Denver, CO, USA.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Introduction: Proliferation of social media as a primary source of information has heightened concerns about misinformation and its societal impact. While individuals frequently consume information online, their ability to fact-check the accuracy varies significantly (Bachmann & Valenzuela, 2023; Lee & Ramazan, 2021). Therefore, the present study examines the association between time spent on social media and critical fact-checking behaviors: (1) actively checking information accuracy, (2) searching for alternative sources to compare accuracy and (3) flagging inaccurate content. Methods: PISA 2022 was the primary data. A total of 4,552 U.S. adolescents (Age Mean= 15.33; Female% = 49.10) were included in the present study. A Pearson Chi-Squared test (χ²) assessed the association between time spent on social media and fact-checking behaviors. Missing data was imputed with a fully conditional specification (Enders et al., 2018). Variables were weighted with sampling weights (OECD, 2023). Strength of these associations was quantified using the Phi coefficient (φ). Results: Results revealed significant associations between time spent on social media and across all three fact-checking behaviors. Specifically, there was a significant and positive association between time spent on social media and actively checking the accuracy of consumed information (χ²= 26138.245, df= 5, p< 0.001, φ= 0.084), searching for different sources to compare information accuracy (χ²= 33193.957, df= 5, p< 0.001, φ= 0.095) and flagging inaccurate content (χ²= 30016.775, df= 5, p< 0.001, φ= 0.091). Spending more time on social media was related to increasing trends in fact-checking behaviors where these associations yielded small-to-moderate effect sizes. Discussion: Findings could suggest adolescents may have been leveraging online time to develop critical information evaluation skills. Social media platforms could implement features such as reminders to verify or flag content to foster proactive fact-checking habits and enhance usability by integrating prompts encouraging accuracy checks or badges recognizing users for responsible online engagement.
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