This Age Group Is Most Likely To Fall For Conspiracy Theories — And It’s Not Who You Think

To find all this out, the researchers conducted a meta analysis ― a kind of “study of studies” ― which synthesized the results of 191 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2024.

This huge dataset, which included over 374,000 participants, suggested a “robust” association between young age and belief in conspiracies, Bordeleau said. 

“To confirm that, we ran our own original multinational survey of more than 6,000 people across six diverse countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the U.S. and South Africa,” he explained. 

Regardless of the country, the results were the same: Age was the most potent predictor of conspiratorial belief systems, more than a person’s gender, level of education or income.