Navigating the Cyber Frontier: Youth Capabilities to Confront Dis/Misinformation with Digital Literacy and Digital Security

Abstract

The internet serves a variety of functions for youth, including learning, socialization, entertainment, and access to news and information. Youth also have a lot of possibilities to be exposed to threats that occur online such as dis/misinformation and other risks. Dis/misinformation can be considered insecure communications if it compromises the integrity or authenticity of the information. This research aims to explore youth digital literacy competencies, news literacy, and digital security skills, especially how it could help them minimize dis/misinformation. This mixed-method research used a focus group discussion of youth aged 18–22 and a survey for data collection. The result shows that youth have sufficient digital literacy competencies especially on information literacy, computer literacy, media literacy, and visual literacy, but they should improve communication literacy. Their news literacy capability is also adequate for filtering news and finding trustworthy sources. Their actions when encountering dis/misinformation include filtering the content, double-checking credible sources or official accounts and mainstream media, looking for the first post, also comparing the information from many sources. For capability in digital security, they are quite capable of protecting themselves especially in setting secure password, privacy and location setting, and sharing setting.