Young people more susceptible to Covid disinformation, vaccine hesitancy

In late 2020, as the first Covid-19 vaccines were preparing to roll out across the world, researchers gathered to discuss a troubling pattern: young people were more likely to believe false claims about the virus and more skeptical about vaccines themselves. The finding emerged at a Health Research Board conference in Dublin focused on trust in medical research, where Dr. Eileen Culloty of Dublin City University's Institute for Future Media and Journalism laid out what recent American studies had shown. Younger people, she explained, were consuming the false narratives at higher rates than their elders.

The reason, Culloty suggested, had less to do with ideology and more to do with perception of risk. Young people, believing themselves less vulnerable to severe Covid illness, were paying less attention to news coverage of the pandemic. When misinformation reached them, they lacked the context to recognize it as false. They had not been following the story closely enough to develop a sense of what was true. It was a problem of inattention as much as credulity.

But the vaccine hesitancy ran deeper still. Culloty identified what she called the paradox of vaccine success: younger generations had grown up in a world where the diseases vaccines prevented had largely vanished. Polio, measles, diphtheria—these were not threats they had witnessed or feared. Their parents and grandparents remembered these illnesses, remembered the fear. Young people did not. Without that lived memory or even cultural memory of what these diseases could do, vaccines seemed less urgent, less necessary. Why take something for a threat you had never seen?

The stakes were high. As 2021 approached, governments would need to vaccinate large portions of their populations to control the pandemic. If young people remained hesitant or skeptical, that goal would become harder to reach. The problem was not merely academic.

Mark Little, a former RTÉ journalist who had founded Storyful, a company dedicated to verifying online content, offered a distinction that mattered. There was misinformation—simply false things circulating on the internet, often spread without malicious intent. And then there was disinformation: organized campaigns designed to achieve specific real-world outcomes, like stoking protests against lockdowns. The latter required vigilance of a different order. It was not just about correcting facts; it was about recognizing coordinated manipulation.

Culloty noted that the digital age had created a particular vulnerability. Every new study now moved through a cycle: publication, distortion (often to serve some agenda), and correction. Covid-19 had accelerated this cycle dramatically. Research was being rushed to publication before peer review was complete. News outlets, eager for the latest findings, were amplifying studies that had not yet been vetted by the scientific community. The gap between what was known and what was being claimed had widened.

Yet there was a path forward. Research showed that corrections could work, especially if they were fast, repeated, and offered some explanation for why the false claim was wrong. The key was not just saying "that's false" but helping people understand the mechanism of the error. Speed mattered too. The longer a false claim circulated, the harder it became to dislodge.

As the conference concluded, the challenge was clear: a generation that had never known the diseases vaccines prevented, consuming information in a digital landscape where false claims spread faster than corrections, would need to be convinced of something their lived experience had not taught them to fear. The vaccines themselves were coming. The harder work—building trust—was just beginning.