While the vast majority of people over 50 look for health information on the internet, a new poll shows 74% would have very little or no trust in such information if it were generated by artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, 20% of older adults have little or no confidence that they could spot misinformation about a health topic if they came across it.
That percentage was even higher among older adults who say their mental health, physical health or memory is fair or poor, and among those who report having a disability that limits their activities. In other words, those who might need trustworthy health information the most were more likely to say they had little or no confidence they could spot false information.
Among all older adults who have searched for health information online recently, only 32% said it's very easy to find something accurate.
The new findings come from a report on health literacy among people age 50 and older, produced by a team from the University of Michigan and AARP using data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging.
The authors note that health systems, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations and government agencies could use the results to help them produce and promote accurate and easy-to-understand health information in multiple formats. They also point to an opportunity for organizations to help older adults understand how to find trustworthy health information for themselves or others.
The poll is based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center.
"Amid this lack of trust, our findings also highlight the key role that health care providers and pharmacists play as trusted health messengers in older adults' lives, and even the role that friends or family with medical backgrounds can play," said poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., a primary care physician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and associate professor of internal medicine at U-M.
We also find that websites run by health organizations are seen by most who use them as very trustworthy, which suggests a need to encourage more people to use them."
Jeffrey Kullgren, Associate Professor, Internal Medicine, University of Michigan
In all, 84% of older adults said they had gotten health information directly from a health care provider, pharmacist or friend or family member in the past year. More than 70% of them rated the health professionals as very trustworthy, but 62% said the same about friends and family with medical backgrounds.
The poll also asked older adults about how much they used and trusted specific types of online sites offering health information, from .com sites focused on such topics, to university, hospital, government and health-related nonprofit sites.
In all, 58% of all older adults polled said they had used at least one such site for information in the past year. The kind of site used by the highest percentage of people was 39% for .com health information sites such as WebMD and Healthline, followed by 31% saying they had visited a health system's website.
Among those who had used a .com site, 36% said they felt its information was very trustworthy, compared with 59% of those who had visited a health care system's website. Far smaller percentages had visited sites run by federal government agencies (21%), nonprofit organizations such as the American Heart Association or American Cancer Society (14%) and universities or medical schools (11%). But among those who had visited such sites, around 60% said they felt these sites were very trustworthy.
"Older adults are increasingly turning to the internet for health information, yet there is a significant trust gap, particularly with AI-generated content," said Indira Venkat, AARP Senior Vice President of Research. "While AI advancements offer promising opportunities to support healthy aging, this poll underscores the urgent need for reliable, accessible health resources. Ensuring that older adults have trustworthy information from health care providers and credible websites is crucial as we navigate the evolving landscape of digital health."
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