Adolescents’ social media use and conspiracy beliefs: The moderating role of rational and experiential thinking

Abstract

A growing number of teenagers use social media, where they are frequently exposed to misinformation, including conspiracy theories. This cross-sectional study examines the relationships between social media use (with a focus on overall frequency and information-seeking use), tendency toward rational and experiential thinking, and conspiracy beliefs among adolescents from Romania and Poland. We hypothesized that while social media tends to spread conspiracy theories, such information is most likely to translate into beliefs among those with lower levels of rational thinking. The total sample comprised 561 participants (Mage = 17.27, SDage = 0.79). The results indicated that social media use for information-seeking—but not the frequency of social media use—positively predicts conspiracy beliefs among adolescents. However, tendencies toward both rational and experiential thinking moderated these relationships: the positive associations between social media use and conspiracy beliefs were significant only among adolescents with low or medium levels of rational thinking (for both frequency of use and information-seeking use), as well as among those with low or medium levels of experiential thinking (for information-seeking use only). We also found moderating effects for other purposes of social media use, specifically self-presentation and entertainment. In general, our study shows that the tendency toward rational thinking moderates the relationship between more purposes of social media use and conspiracy beliefs, suggesting that rational-analytical processing provides broader protection across different online activities.