Nowadays, people increasingly choose to turn to the Internet and especially to social media for news and other types of content, while often not questioning the trustworthiness of the information. An acute form of this problem is that children and adolescents tend to include the use of new technologies in all the aspects of their daily life, yet most of them are unable to distinguish between fake news and trustful information in an online environment. This study is based on a Dutch empirical study and was conducted in Romania to examine whether schoolchildren and adolescents were able to identify a hoax website as fake, using a self-administrative questionnaire and open group discussions about the given online source. Similar to other studies based on the same research design, this research aims to explore the vulnerability of students to fake news and the way they experience an experimental situation in which they are exposed to online fake information. This exploratory study revealed that both children and adolescents are not preoccupied with the trustworthiness of the information they are exposed to in social media. While only 4 of the 54 students stated that they would not choose to save a fake animal (from a hoax website), all four of them had reasons that proved that they did not perceive the information as being a hoax. Thus, participants proved that they would act upon being exposed to fake information even when they do not trust the source.

中文翻译：

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测试儿童和青少年识别假新闻的能力：准实验和小组讨论的组合设计

如今，人们越来越多地选择转向Internet，尤其是转向社交媒体以获取新闻和其他类型的内容，而通常不会质疑信息的可信赖性。这个问题的一个尖锐形式是，儿童和青少年在日常生活的各个方面都倾向于使用新技术，但是他们中的大多数人无法在在线环境中区分假新闻和可信赖的信息。这项研究基于荷兰的一项经验研究，并且在罗马尼亚进行了研究，目的是使用自我管理的问卷调查表和有关给定在线资源的公开讨论，来检查小学生和青少年是否能够识别欺诈网站。与基于相同研究设计的其他研究类似，这项研究旨在探讨学生对假新闻的脆弱性，以及他们体验暴露于在线假信息的实验情况的方式。这项探索性研究表明，儿童和青少年都不会全神贯注地关注他们在社交媒体中公开的信息。虽然这54名学生中只有4名表示他们不会选择（从恶作剧网站上）保存假动物，但所有这四名学生都有理由证明他们不认为这些信息是恶作剧。因此，参与者证明，即使他们不信任来源，他们也会在暴露于伪造信息后采取行动。这项探索性研究表明，儿童和青少年都不会全神贯注地关注他们在社交媒体中公开的信息。虽然这54名学生中只有4名表示他们不会选择（从恶作剧网站上）保存假动物，但所有这四名学生都有理由证明他们不认为这些信息是恶作剧。因此，参与者证明，即使他们不信任来源，他们也会在暴露于伪造信息后采取行动。这项探索性研究表明，儿童和青少年都不会全神贯注地关注他们在社交媒体中公开的信息。虽然这54名学生中只有4名表示他们不会选择（从恶作剧网站上）保存假动物，但所有这四名学生都有理由证明他们不认为这些信息是恶作剧。因此，参与者证明，即使他们不信任来源，他们也会在暴露于伪造信息后采取行动。