ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Morphing polymer voxels for dynamic information switching.Science advances · 2026Article
- Intelligent Systems, Vulnerable Minds: A Framework for Radicalization to Violence in the Age of AI.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Review
- Awareness motivations and barriers related to rhinoplasty among adults in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Ad-based social media interventions increase belief accuracy and generate pro-social opinions among non-news readers.PloS one · 2026Article
- The integration of artificial intelligence with social Media: opportunities, challenges, and pathways for resource optimization and doctor-patient relationship enhancement in healthcare.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Independently testing prosocial interventions: Methods and recommendations from 31 researchers.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Nudging recommendation algorithms increases news consumption and diversity on YouTube.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Many worry that news on social media leaves people uninformed or even misinformed. Here we conducted a preregistered two-wave online field experiment in France and Germany (N = 3,395) to estimate the effect of following the news on Instagram and WhatsApp. Participants were asked to follow two accounts for 2 weeks and activate the notifications. In the treatment condition, the accounts were those of news organizations, while in the control condition they covered cooking, cinema or art. The treatment enhanced current affairs knowledge, participants' ability to discern true from false news stories and awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news. The treatment had no significant effects on feelings of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization and interest in news or politics. These results suggest that, while some forms of social media use are harmful, others are beneficial and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.