Most older adults don’t trust AI-generated health information — but many aren’t sure what to trust
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.
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.
In all, 84% of older adults said they had gotten health information directly from a healthcare 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 healthcare 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.
The poll also asked about more traditional forms of health literacy and trust in health information. Among the findings:
- 18% of the older adults polled said they did not use the internet to look up health information at all in the past year; this percentage was highest among those over age 65 (24%), those who are Black and non-Hispanic (25%) and those with a high school education or less (26%).
- 14% disagreed completely or somewhat with the statement that it’s easy to understand written information from their health care provider, while 8% said the same about information they receive verbally from the provider
- 26% were not confident they knew or could find information about what an upcoming medical procedure would cost them out of pocket; 20% said the same about potential prescription costs and 18% said they same about upcoming office visits
- When it comes to prescription medicines, 90% agreed completely or somewhat that their medication bottle labels are easy to understand, and 91% agreed that the information that comes with their prescription medicines is easy to understand
- If they were asked to fill out medical forms, 82% felt extremely or quite a bit confident they could do it themselves, but 5% were a little bit or not at all confident.
