Information Literacy: How Students Search for & Verfiy Health-Related Information on Social Media

Today, younger generations utilize social media to access what they perceive to be reliable and accurate information, yet there are some concerns regarding validity and the ease of which students share information. This thesis evaluates how undergraduate students search for and verify information seen on popular social media platforms and analyzes the proficiency of their information literacy skills. The data collected will be used in determining which social media platforms are most frequently used and trusted by students, which types of sources are used in verification of this information if verified at all, and their perception of information literacy. The data collected will be implemented for analysis in comparison to the previously created and studied Social Media Information Literacy Scale (Heiss et al., 2023) and the e-Health Impact Questionnaire (Kelly et al., 2015) to further evaluate how undergraduate students search for and verify health-related information on social media.