The Role of Critical Reflection, Social Media Support, and Feedback on the Evaluation of True and False News Items

Learning to evaluate information in digital contexts relies not only on critical thinking but also on how children acquire and apply knowledge when evaluating news content. In an era in which children increasingly rely on social media as a primary source of information, understanding how cognitive and social factors shape judgments is crucial. The present study examined how an inoculation intervention, cognitive reflection skills, and social context (social media use and adult support) influence children’s credibility judgments of real and fake news. Children evaluated news items before and after completing an inoculation quiz with or without feedback. Results showed that feedback was associated with a greater difference in credibility ratings between true and false news items, but no causal effect of feedback on changes in these ratings. Higher CRT-D scores were associated with credibility judgments overall, but were not associated with greater differentiation between true and false news items. Importantly, the combination of feedback, social media experience, and support from parents or school was associated with higher credibility for true news items, underscoring the role of social context in the evaluation of true and false news items. These findings highlight that learning to evaluate information is a process influenced by both individual cognitive mechanisms and social environments.