With the spread of high-speed Internet and portable smart devices, the way people access and consume information has drastically changed. However, this presents many challenges, including information overload, personal data leakage, and misinformation diffusion. Across the spectrum of risks that Internet users can face nowadays, this work focuses on understanding how young people perceive and deal with false information. Within an experimental campaign involving 261 students, we presented to the participants six different news items and invited them to browse the Internet to assess the veracity of the presented information. Our results suggest that online search is more likely to lead students to validate true news than to refute false ones. We found that students change their opinion related to a specific piece of information more often than their global idea about a broader topic. Also, our experiment reflected that the majority of participants rely on online sources to obtain information and access the news, and those getting information from books and Internet browsing are the most accurate in assessing the veracity of a news item. This work provides a principled understanding of how young people perceive and distinguish true and false pieces of information, identifying strengths and weaknesses amidst young subjects and contributing to build tailored digital information literacy strategies for youth.

翻译：随着高速互联网和便携式智能设备的普及，人们获取和消费信息的方式发生了巨大变化。然而，这带来了诸多挑战，包括信息过载、个人数据泄露和虚假信息扩散。在当今互联网用户可能面临的各种风险中，本研究聚焦于理解年轻人如何感知和应对虚假信息。在涉及261名学生的实验活动中，我们向参与者呈现了六条不同的新闻，并邀请他们通过互联网浏览来评估所呈现信息的真实性。我们的结果表明，在线搜索更可能引导学生验证真实新闻，而非反驳虚假新闻。我们发现，学生针对特定信息改变观点的频率高于改变对更广泛主题的整体看法。此外，实验反映出大多数参与者依赖在线资源获取信息和访问新闻，而通过书籍和互联网浏览获取信息的参与者在评估新闻真实性时最为准确。本研究为理解年轻人如何感知和区分真假信息提供了基本原理，识别了年轻群体的优势与不足，并有助于为青少年制定针对性的数字信息素养策略。