The Digital Deception: Investigating the Impact of Misinformation on Children’s Cognitive Development and Educational Outcomes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31384/jisrmsse/2025.23.2.3Keywords:
misinformation, digital deception, cognitive development, educational outcomesAbstract
In the age of digital world, children are constantly subjected to misinformation, which can profoundly influence cognitive development, education levels and experience. While misinformation has been well researched among adults, its effects on young and developing individuals remains underexplored particularly in underdeveloped contexts. This qualitative article investigating how misleading online content influences the beliefs, perceptions and behaviors of children aged between 7-13 years. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews of 30 children (15 males and 15 females), who are middle-class students of the schools in Garden west, Karachi, this study explores how children perceive false information and how it affects their critical thinking, cognitive abilities, learning performance and socialization. This investigative paper is constructivist in nature based on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, and analyzes data using six-step thematic analysis of Braun and Clarke. By employing this methodology, the results demonstrate that children have difficulties with differentiating the truth and fiction, experience academic and emotional confusion as a result of misinformation, and benefit significantly of early media-literacy instruction. The study delivers detailed and contextual information on how children view digital content and how these perceptions influence their views of the world and academic achievements.
Downloads
References
Adeyemi, V. (2025). The Impact of Digital Technology on a Child’s Cognitive and Social Development: Implications for Education. Premier Journal of Psychology. https:// doi.org/10.70389/PJP.100006
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge University Press.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Bulger, M., & Davison, P. (2018). The promises, challenges, and futures of media literacy. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2018-10-1-1
Celada, S. A. J., Grafilo, M. J. A., Japay, A. C. G. J., Yamas, F. F. C., & Genelza, G. G. (2025). Behind the lens: the drawbacks of media exposure to young children’s social development. International Journal of Human Research and Social Science Studies(04), 2–2. https://doi.org/10.55677/ijhrsss/06-2025-Vol02I4
Cerniglia, L., Cimino, S., & Ammaniti, M. (2020). What are the effects of screen time on emotion regulation and academic achievements? A three-wave longitudinal study on children from 4 to 8 years of age. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 19(2), 145– 160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X20969846
Dhiman, B. (2023). The rise and Impact of Misinformation and Fake News on digital Youth: A Critical review. SSRN . Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=4438362
Dumitru, E. (2020). Testing children and adolescents’ ability to identify fake news: a combined design of Quasi-Experiment and group discussions. Societies, 10(3), Article 71. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030071
Fake news and critical literacy: Final report. (2018). National Literacy Trust.
Fathaigh, R. Ó., Helberger, N., & Appelman, N. (2021). The perils of legally defining disinformation. Internet Policy Review, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.4.1584
Gibbs, T. (2025). Emotional Manipulation in Cyberspace: Examining digital deception’s Consequences on intimacy and trust. Cybersecurity and Innovative Technology Journal, 3(1), 43–53. https://doi.org/10.53889/citj.v3i1.650
Homaid, A. A. (2022). Problematic social media use and associated consequences on academic performance decrement during COVID-19. Addictive Behaviors, 132, Article 107370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2022.107370
Howard, P. N., Howard, P. N., Prakash, N., Vosloo, S., & University of Oxford; UNICEF. (2021, August). Digital misinformation/disinformation and children. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/856/file/UNICEF-Global-Insight-Digital-Mis-Disinformation-and-Children-2021.pdf
Kolotouchkina, O., Rangel, C., & Gómez, P. N. (2023). Digital media and younger audiences. Media and Communication, 11(4), 124–128. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i4.7647 Lemaire, M., Ye, S., Stanc, L. L., Borst, G., & Cassotti, M. (2025). The development of media truth discernment and fake news detection is related to the development of reasoning during adolescence. Scientific Reports, 15, Article 6854. https://doi.org/ 10.1038/s41598-025-90427-z
Levine, P. (2015). Media Literacy for the 21st Century. A Response to ”The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education”. Democracy & Education, 23(1), Article 15. . https://doi.org/10.65214/2164-7992.1183.
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the “post-truth” era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008
Mihailidis, P. (2014). Media Literacy and the Emerging Citizen Youth, Engagement and Participation in Digital Culture. Bristol: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1293-5
Ofcom. (2023, March). Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report 2023. Retrieved from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/ data/assets/pdf_file/0027/255852/childrens-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2023.pdf
Orticio, E., Meyer, M., & Kidd, C. (2024). Exposure to detectable inaccuracies makes children more diligent fact-checkers of novel claims. Nature Human Behaviour, 8(12), 2322–2329. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01992-8
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced strategies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(7), 2521–2526. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806781116
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1972). The psychology of the child (and others, Ed.). Basic Books. Rideout, V., Peebles, A., Mann, S., & Robb, M. B. (2022). The Common Sense Census: Media use by tweens and teens, 2021 (and others, Ed.). San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.
Sharevski, F., & Loop, J. V. (2024). Children, parents, and misinformation on social media. In and others (Ed.), 2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) (pp. 1536– 1553). https://doi.org/doi:10.1109/SP54263.2024.00221.
Shtulman, A. (2024). Children’s susceptibility to online misinformation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 55, Article 101753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101753
Shutzman, B., & Gershy, N. (2022). Children’s excessive digital media use, mental health problems and the protective role of parenting during COVID-19. Computers in Human Behavior, 139, 107559–107559.
Tahir, A. (2023). The psychological impact of fake news about COVID-19 on social media users in Pakistan. UCP Journal of Mass Communication, 1(2), 35–60. https://doi.org/ 10.24312/ucp-jmc.01.02.201
Tsfati, Y., Stroud, N. J., & Chotiner, A. (2014). Exposure to Ideological News and Perceived Opinion Climate: Testing the Media Effects Component of Spiral-of-Silence in a Fragmented Media Landscape. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 19(1), 3– 23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161213508206
UNICEF Innocenti. (2019, November). Global Kids Online: Growing up in a connected world How do children’s online experiences affect their rights and well-being? Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/7011/file/GKO-Comparative-Report-2019.pdf
Vartiainen, H., Kahila, J., Tedre, M., Sointu, E., & Valtonen, T. (2023). More than fabricated news reports: Children’s perspectives and experiences of fake news. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 15(2), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2023-15-2-2
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M. Cole, V. Jolm-Steiner, S. Scribner, E. Souberman, et al., Eds.). Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9vz4
Xu, S., Shtulman, A., & Young, A. G. (2022). Can children detect fake news? Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https:// escholarship.org/uc/item/9bh2z1q9
Zaborova, E. (2021). Internet Information and Academic Literacy in the Digital Age. KnE Social Sciences, 5(2), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v5i2.8328
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ayesha Niaz Malik
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright: The Authors
