Online Safety as a New Component of Digital Literacy for Young People

Abstract

Introduction. Digital literacy refers to the skills required to achieve digital competence, the confident and critical use of information and communication technology for le arning, leisure, communication and future work of young people. Digital competence has a dual nature. First of all, it is the technical ability to operate programs, pages, equipment. Secondly, it is also the ability to use digital media safely. Both perspectives are important in the educational perspective, i.e. media educat ion and socialisation. Materials and Methods. The paper presents the attempts to measure digital literacy in the area of threats resutling from using the new media in the group of upper-secondary school students (fourth educational cycle). The study was carried out using a diagnostic test with 18 questions. The research was conducted in the group of 1693 youths aged 15–21. The research was designed based on traditional methods of testing knowledge and skills. Results. The findings showed that the weakest digital literacy component was the copyright-related knowledge and the strongest area was online shopping and financial operations. All digital literacy components are interrelated. The improvement in one area leads to the development of other digital literacy elements. Despite this correlation, digital literacy is a heterogeneous concept. There are also differences regarding certain digital literacy components, determined by gender – girls obtained higher test results in terms of the soft competencies whereas boys were better with the technical aspects of digital literacy. Based on the cluster analysis, we noticed that 41.41% of the students obtained good and very good results from the competence test. More than half of the students require further education in most of the analysed areas. Discussion and Conclusion. For educational decision-makers, the findings highlight the importance of designing training programs aimed at developing students’ digital literacies, with a special focus on new topics as sexting, piracy and cyberbullying.

Peculiarities of personality development of the future in the context of information and communication technologies and education system reform (Polish experience)

“…The crisis caused by these circumstances requires a meaningful revision of current pedagogical methods. We can now speak of a pronounced unpreparedness of the psycho-pedagogical sector to provide the necessary conditions for the realization of the future personality potential (Tomczyk & Oyelere, 2019;Tomczyk & Eger, 2020). Cyber-education cannot guarantee a sufficient level of effectiveness and learning material assimilation.…”

Youth Exposure to Hate in the Online Space: An Exploratory Analysis

“…In an evaluation of existing internet safety resources and programs, results have shown that experiencing a risky online situation is not about “lack of knowledge,” but rather omission of the necessary skills, referred to as digital literacy, needed when navigating the internet [ 47 ]. Furthermore, existing literature in the European context, has demonstrated that there is a gap in the digital literacy of adolescents, especially concerning the ability to critically assess the credibility of information they encounter online [ 48 ]. This is particularly relevant to the current study, as the use of misinformation and the propagation of racialized myths—referred to in the literature as persuasive storytelling—is central to the internal communication and recruitment strategies of hate groups [ 24 , 31 , 39 , 49 ].…”

The Impact of Parental Bereavement on Young People: A Thematic Analysis of Using Online Web Forums as a Method of Coping

“…Encouraging users’ online safety is a common recommendation from researchers (Shillair et al, 2015; Tomczyk & Eger, 2020). Considering some of the harms that young people may face when using such platforms, this is something that should merit awareness.…”