Perceived credibility of scientific content on Facebook by grade-school students: The effect of popularity

In this quantitative study (N = 303), we explore children’s and teen’s credibility assessment of scientific information on Facebook, and its associations with content popularity. By manipulating content familiarity and popularity, we find interesting differences between age-levels. While popularity did not play an important role in the 12th-graders’ credibility evaluation (who were mostly affected by content familiarity), it was prominent for the 6th-graders (where high-popularity compensated for non-familiarity); the 9th-graders, as an intermediate age-level, demonstrate an equal influence of both familiarity and popularity.