Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust.

Authors

Sacha Altay, Emma Hoes, Magdalena Wojcieszak

Published in

Nature human behaviour. Jun 27, 2025. Epub Jun 27, 2025.

Abstract

Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany (N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condition they covered cooking, cinema or art. The treatment enhanced current affairs knowledge, participants' ability to discern true from false news stories and awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news. The treatment had no significant effects on feelings of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization and interest in news or politics. These results suggest that, while some forms of social media use are harmful, others are beneficial and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.

PMID:
40579484
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Jun 2025.

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