According to research, three out of every four news are shared on social networks without being read.

Many social media users share links to informative content online without reading the article, according to a new study. Between 2017 and 2020, researchers at American universities 35 million streams Public posts on Facebook containing URLs of websites at key moments in the US political cycle. They found that 75% of these published links were shared without being clicked. For example, a user can submit the title, summary or number of likes of a news story. Without reading the content or verifying the facts.

The study was published in the journal ‘Nature Human Behavior‘, “The results are as revealing as they are alarming,” he notes. “This may explain why it is so common Misinformation spreads very quickly through social networks,” the authors add.

Why is it shared without being read?

Researchers believe people are sharing without clicking due to the “rushed” nature of the content online interactionswhere users are more spontaneous in what they share. “One of the reasons for this may be: information overload “Personal and social networks put pressure on users to be fast, pushing them to rely on simple and often superficial signals,” the study authors write.

What happens then is that the social media user feels they are more knowledgeable about scientific and political information than they actually are, it continues to work. It was discovered that People who identify with political movements and those who openly support a party are more likely to share informative content without clicking it than self-centered people. politically neutral.

However, the authors acknowledge that this trend may be due to a small number of accounts and Hyperactive partisan communities on Facebook Those who tend to forward content to increase their reach. It was noteworthy that the research did not include users who read the content on another platform and then re-shared it without clicking the same link.

However, the authors recommend that social media companies design general warnings or specific warnings that keep users informed before sharing content. risks of doing this without reading the material.