Online Medical Misinformation Disproportionately Affects Older Adults

New research from the University of Utah reveals that while health misinformation exists online, its reach remains surprisingly limited—except among older adults, particularly those with conservative political leanings.

Communication scholars tracked the web browsing activities of over 1,000 U.S. adults for four weeks and found that websites containing questionable health information are relatively rare and receive little traffic overall. The findings, published in Nature Aging, provide a nuanced picture of how misinformation spreads across different demographics.

“It’s sort of good news. Overall, the levels are pretty low,” said lead author Ben Lyons, an associate professor in the Department of Communication. “Not all older adults are like this, but the outliers are concentrated among older adults.”

The research team, which included Andy King and Kimberly Kaphingst from the University of Utah’s School of Medicine and Huntsman Cancer Institute, analyzed approximately 9 million page views, including 500,000 YouTube videos. Of the 1,055 domains categorized as health-related, only 78—or 6.8%—were classified as containing low-credibility health information.

During the four-week study period, just 13% of participants visited even one such site, with these visits accounting for only 3% of all health-related browsing. However, the exposure was highly concentrated, with the top 10% of participants responsible for more than three-quarters of all visits to dubious health websites.

The age-related findings align with Lyons’ previous research showing older Americans are more likely to engage with and share political misinformation. However, the study revealed an important distinction.

“The age effect is way bigger for politics,” Lyons explained. “People see politics as way more entertaining than health-related content. You don’t get a feeling of team identity from sharing health misinformation like you would for information that puts down your political opponents.”

The study also examined how users arrive at these questionable health sites. Contrary to expectations, most users weren’t being referred from platforms like Facebook or Google. Instead, the research suggests a more insular pattern where people who visit one low-credibility site tend to visit others directly, creating a closed ecosystem of dubious information consumption.

“What we found, at least in the referral data, is that it’s a more insular type of thing,” said Lyons. “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.”

This pattern suggests that exposure to misinformation isn’t random. People who already believed false health claims or held more conspiratorial views were more likely to encounter questionable health content, indicating a self-reinforcing cycle of misinformation exposure.

The findings have important implications for public health communication. Since older adults typically have more health concerns and make more medical decisions, they naturally spend more time seeking health information online. This increased search activity, combined with less digital literacy in some cases, may put them at greater risk of encountering misleading health information.

The research suggests that improving online health information environments and helping people better evaluate what they encounter may be especially important for seniors. At the same time, the findings show this isn’t just a “health misinformation” problem, but rather something tied to broader patterns of how people navigate the internet.

The study, titled “Exposure to low-credibility health websites is limited and is concentrated among older adults,” was funded by the Huntsman Cancer Institute. These findings will be incorporated into Lyons’ forthcoming book, “Dubious News and the Aging American,” published by Oxford University Press.

As societies continue to grapple with the spread of online misinformation across various domains, this research provides valuable insight into how different types of misinformation spread and which populations might be most vulnerable to its effects.