Conspiracy Theories Are Spreading Through UK Schools, Study Warns

The front line in the fight against conspiracy theories is not a fact-checking website or a social media moderation team. It is a classroom. A major UK research project that surveyed 2,349 young people aged 11 to 18, along with 448 school staff, found that conspiracy claims now surface routinely in UK schools — and that teenagers trust social media influencers more than they trust the government. The findings, published by the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools, are being highlighted again this week, putting fresh attention on a problem researchers say is getting worse.

The commission, set up by the Pears Foundation and the consultancy Public First in March 2024, spent two years studying how conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation show up among children and school staff. Its first report landed in February 2025. The second-year report, published in March 2026, found that the share of pupils who say conspiracy content is a problem in their school has risen by a third in just one year, according to a write-up of the research.

What young people are actually hearing

The theories pupils encounter most often are the classics of internet folklore: the claim that the moon landing was faked, and the claim that the Earth is flat. Both topped the list of conspiracy theories that 11- to 18-year-olds said they had come across online or in person, followed by theories about Covid-19, vaccines and climate change. BBC Bitesize defines a conspiracy theory as a belief that a secret but influential group is controlling events behind the scenes — and notes that many such claims lack real evidence even when they spread fast on social feeds.

What pupils consider harmful varies sharply by topic. Fewer than four in ten thought believing the moon landing was staged was a damaging belief, while almost eight in ten said the claim that Covid vaccines contain microchips was damaging. That split matters to teachers, because it suggests pupils are sorting theories by instinct rather than evidence. More than half of pupils — 52 percent — said there was at least one conspiracy theory that would make it hard to stay friends with someone who believed it, with Holocaust denial and flat-Earth belief the most commonly named deal-breakers, each cited by about a fifth of pupils. It is a pattern that keeps repeating online: three viral chart posts fooled millions of feeds in a single week earlier this year.

Who teenagers trust has shifted

The study's trust numbers are the part most likely to worry policymakers. Nearly nine in ten young people said they had high trust in their parents, and six in ten said the same about their teachers. Well under half extended that trust to mainstream news outlets, with barely more than one in ten saying they trusted news completely. And when it came to government, more than a third of pupils — 35 percent — said they did not trust it at all, a worse score than the 29 percent who said they distrusted social media influencers completely.

That trust gap helps explain how conspiracy content travels. When a claim arrives from an influencer a teenager follows rather than from a newsroom or an official source, it can carry more weight than anything in a textbook. The commission's researchers have warned that adults and young people increasingly live in separate information worlds, which makes it harder for parents and teachers to even know what pupils are seeing. AI adds another layer to the problem: recent research found that an AI chatbot can talk a person into a conspiracy theory, not just out of one.

Why teachers think pupils bring them up

School staff told the researchers that curiosity, not conviction, is usually behind it. Staff estimated that 55 percent of pupils raised conspiracy theories because they were curious about them, and 32 percent because they wanted more information. A smaller share — 44 percent — did so to stir controversy, and just over a fifth to upset classmates. The picture is of teenagers testing ideas out loud rather than a generation lost to rabbit holes.

Still, the volume is striking. Eight in ten teachers said a pupil had brought a conspiracy theory to them directly. With generative AI making fabricated images, audio and video easier to produce and harder to spot, the commission found that nearly four in ten young people had seen deepfake content in the previous month. At the start of this school year, England's Department for Education updated its Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance to treat conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation as part of the safeguarding challenge UK schools now face.

What happens next

The counterpoint to the alarm is that most pupils are asking questions, not declaring allegiances. Conspiracy Theories Are Spreading Through UK Schools, Study Warns — and the commission's second-year report describes a picture of growing concern across pupils, parents and staff alike. According to the researchers, the takeaway is that schools need support and practical tools, not panic — and that trust in teachers remains one of the strongest assets in the picture. The commission has urged that tackling conspiracy content be treated as a safeguarding issue first and an internet issue second.

For readers outside the UK, the lesson travels. Teenagers everywhere are getting their news from feeds, trusting creators over institutions, and bringing what they see into classrooms. The adults around them — parents first, teachers second — are still the voices they trust most. What happens next depends on whether those adults feel equipped for the conversation. The commission's full second-year report sets out its evidence, and a write-up of the findings traces how the debate has moved into mainstream education policy.