Anyone who remembers their teenage years will have no problem believing this one anyway, but now a group of researchers have the data to prove it: teenagers are more likely to tell lies than any other age group.
A University of Amsterdam study of more than 1,000 people, aged between six and 77, tested for "lying proficiency and lying frequency".
Participants were asked a simple general knowledge question and invited to lie or give a truthful answer. They were also asked to admit how many lies they had told recently, and to whom.
Researchers discovered that teenagers had told an average of 2.8 lies in the last 24 hours.
The study, published in the journal Acta Psychologica, also found that children aged between six and eight and people aged 60 years and over were the worst and most infrequent liars.
The team believe young adults have lower inhibitory control, which makes them more adept at craftily suppressing the truth at will.
