New research shows while overall traffic to low-credibility health sites that may include health misinformation is low, it is highly concentrated among seniors, particularly those who lean right politically.

New research from University of Utah communication scholars finds that while websites containing low-credibility health information are relatively scarce, traffic to these sites is heavily concentrated among older adults. The findings were published in the journal Nature Aging.

The study, which tracked the web-surfing activities of more than 1,000 US adults for four weeks, indicates that the population most vulnerable to health issues is also the most likely to be exposed to potentially harmful information online.

“It’s sort of good news, though. Overall, the levels are pretty low,” says Ben Lyons, an associate professor in the Department of Communication and the study’s lead author, in a release. He emphasizes that only a small number of people are drawn to dubious medical information online. “Not all older adults are like this, but the outliers are concentrated among older adults.”

Key Findings on User Behavior

During the study period, only 13% of participants visited even one low-credibility health site, and those visits made up just 3% of all health-related browsing. However, the exposure was highly concentrated in a small group. The top 10% of participants accounted for more than three-quarters of all visits to these sites.

Because older adults tend to have more health burdens and make more medical decisions, they often spend more time seeking health information online. The researchers examined the ratios of visits involving low-credibility information and found these ratios to be much higher for older adults.

“Most people are not visiting these kinds of websites,” Lyons says, in a release. “Visits are pretty rare overall, but the sort of patterns we’ve seen in numerous trace-data studies tend to be replicated here. It’s older adults, in particular, those who consume more right-leaning partisan news.”

An Insular Information Ecosystem

The research team explored how users were directed to these URLs and found that major platforms were not the primary drivers.

“Are people going through Google search, or are they being referred through Facebook? We’re not really seeing that in this data,” Lyons says. “What we found, at least in the referral data, is that it’s a more insular type of thing. They’re visiting these because they visit other low-credibility sites, they’re clicking through, and they’re spending more time on these sites. They’re going to them directly.”

The study also discovered that individuals who already held false health beliefs or had more conspiratorial views were more likely to encounter questionable health content. The findings suggest that improving online health information environments and helping people, especially seniors, better evaluate what they encounter online is an important consideration for healthcare professionals.

Featured image: screenshot of a web page that was included in the study of health misinformation online