Lab-based research shows that adults can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that as teens they perpetrated crimes that never actually occurred.
I once had a dream where I went to jail, and it felt extremely real. When I woke up it took a while to shake it and weeks later I would think back to it and it still felt very real and sometimes took me a while to decide if it was a real memory or not. It was to the point where I considered jumping online to research it. Definitely a weird experience, but can see how it could be easy to convince yourself that a memory is real.
I once had a dream where I went to jail, and it felt extremely real. When I woke up it took a while to shake it and weeks later I would think back to it and it still felt very real and sometimes took me a while to decide if it was a real memory or not. It was to the point where I considered jumping online to research it. Definitely a weird experience, but can see how it could be easy to convince yourself that a memory is real.