Children have a reputation for credulity that is undeserved; even preschoolers have proven adept at identifying implausible claims and unreliable informants. Still, the strategies children use to identify and reject dubious information are often superficial, which leaves them vulnerable to accepting such information if conveyed through seemingly authoritative channels or formatted in seemingly authentic ways. Indeed, children of all ages have difficulty differentiating legitimate websites and news stories from illegitimate ones, as they are misled by the inclusion of outwardly professional features such as graphs, statistics, and journalistic layout. Children may not be inherently credulous, but their skepticism toward dubious information is often shallow enough to be overridden by the deceptive trappings of online misinformation.

孩子们有轻信的名声，这是不值得的。事实证明，即使是学龄前儿童也能善于识别不可信的说法和不可靠的线人。尽管如此，儿童用来识别和拒绝可疑信息的策略往往是肤浅的，这使得他们很容易接受通过看似权威的渠道或以看似真实的方式传达的信息。事实上，各个年龄段的孩子都很难区分合法网站和新闻报道与非法网站和新闻报道，因为他们被图表、统计数据和新闻布局等表面上的专业特征所误导。孩子们可能并不天生容易轻信，但他们对可疑信息的怀疑往往很浅薄，足以被网上错误信息的欺骗性陷阱所掩盖。