Thomas Laschyk: The Elephant Isn’t in the Classroom – A Guest Column

Who is most likely to fall for fake news? It’s adults, not teenagers. I’ve been fact-checking with Volksverpetzer for over ten years. And when I hear people on talk shows, in op-eds, and in workshop requests—where they’re looking for a solution to the oft-cited problems with fake news—the answer I hear very often is: young people. Solutions for school classes, social media bans. Too much TikTok, not enough news, no sense of what’s true and false—they’ve just never learned that. It’s one of the most popular narratives in this debate. It actually doesn’t hold up to research. And it’s not what I experience in everyday life either.

Let’s start with the classic example. As early as 2019, researchers showed who had shared links from fake news sites on Facebook during the 2016 U.S. election campaign: only 3 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, but 11 percent of those over 65. On average, older people shared nearly seven times as many such articles as the youngest, regardless of party affiliation or education level. The situation is similar in Germany: A 2021 study found that information literacy “on average declined with age—and did so markedly and significantly.”

But it’s not just “older people” either. That would also be an incomplete picture, which does little to help us tackle the problem. In fact, it’s possible to pinpoint exactly what political views are held by those who typically fall for fake news. The 2021 analysis revealed that, when sorted by party preference, the supporters of one party came in a distant last place in terms of information literacy: the AfD.

People in Germany who visit unreliable news sites are generally on the political right. In short, that is the finding of a study by Goethe University Frankfurt and the Hertie School, which linked the actual online behavior of German adults from 2017 and 2024 with survey data. The most reliable predictor of whether someone consumes unreliable sources was a preference for the AfD and dissatisfaction with democracy. Age, gender, and education showed no consistent correlation.

Right-wing extremism as a key influencing factor

This aligns with the sender’s page. An analysis of 32 million tweets by lawmakers from 26 countries found that far-right populism is the strongest factor determining whether a party spreads misinformation. Not populism itself, not left-wing populism, not conservative politics. For Germany, an analysis in PNAS Nexus shows that 6.4% of the links shared by AfD lawmakers led to unreliable websites; for the CDU and CSU, the figure was 0.18%, and for the SPD, 0.03%. The AfD was the only European party whose choice of sources resembled that of the now-far-right U.S. Republicans.

Far-right extremists are the ones who spread the most fake news, and their supporters are the ones who believe it the most. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, nearly 60 percent of voters with a rigid far-right worldview tend to support the AfD, and conspiracy theories generally find majority support among its supporters. In the Bertelsmann study “An Unsettled Public,” AfD voters are disproportionately represented in the group with low trust in the media. And how old are AfD voters? In the 2025 federal election, according to representative election statistics, the party received 27.1% of the vote among 25- to 44-year-olds and 25.7% among 45- to 59-year-olds, but only 19 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds. So the core demographic is not the student generation; it is the parents’ generation.

But haven’t we read a lot about high levels of support for the AfD among first-time voters? According to Infratest dimap, the AfD received 42 percent of the votes from 18- to 24-year-olds in Saxony-Anhalt just a few weeks ago. That’s a lot. But among 35- to 44-year-olds and 45- to 59-year-olds, it actually won an absolute majority. Where young people vote for the right, their parents vote even further to the right. But they didn’t learn that on TikTok—they learned it from their parents. Yes, the AfD’s share of the vote among young people has risen in some cases compared to the past. But that share has risen across the board—it’s not specifically among young people. A 2024 study suggests that, in the long term, there’s no evidence yet of a “shift to the right” among young people.

But what about reports like these? According to the 2025 JIM Study, 67 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds encountered fake news in the past month. This is often interpreted as evidence of their susceptibility. I see it the other way around: Anyone who recognizes a false report as such and calls it out hasn’t fallen for it. Those who fall for fake news don’t even realize it. Even in the Bertelsmann study, younger people report having noticed disinformation more frequently than older people, even when accounting for their more intensive use of the internet. Noticing it is the first step toward recognizing it, not toward falling for it.

The Focus Shifts to Youth—Out of Convenience

Why, then, do we still love to tell ourselves the opposite? Because it’s convenient. If young people are the problem, then we aren’t. In that case, there’s no need for self-reflection—just a media literacy workshop in ninth grade. And here at Volksverpetzer, we get a lot of requests for just that. Young people—the ideal target for shifting blame: They don’t appear on talk shows, they don’t write editorials, and they have no lobby in the arts and culture section. People talk about them, not with them. If you can’t defend yourself, you’re the one who gets the blame.

By the way, that’s also why people seeking refuge make such good bogeymen.

The price of this convenience is high. Even the authors of the Facebook study warned that media education in schools would do little to solve the problem if it is primarily older people who are spreading fake news. Before any classroom workshops could have an impact, a government elected by people in their mid-50s could drive every teacher with an immigrant background out of the country and introduce classes segregated by ethnicity and disability. And yes, these are actual plans of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt.

So what helps instead? Media literacy belongs where it’s lacking: in adult education and professional development, in workplaces, clubs, and adult education centers. As the Bertelsmann Foundation advocates, platforms must be required to incorporate fact-checking rather than doing away with it altogether. But the platform billionaires are even campaigning on behalf of the far right. We must stop treating disinformation as a generational issue. It is a political issue. Admitting this is uncomfortable because it applies to us: our parents, our colleagues, our WhatsApp family groups. But we won’t solve a problem unless we name it correctly.