Pathways to online resilience. The role of digital literacy in protecting young people from online risks, with a focus on mis- and disinformation

Today's young people are navigating in and engaging with a world that is increasingly mediated by digital technologies. However, while the Internet and social media are valuable sources for a myriad of opportunities, such as interacting with friends, learning new skills, or creating digital content, concerns have surged regarding potential negative consequences of these online activities. Online risks such as cyberbullying, exposure to violent or pornographic contents, or online grooming, among others, have emerged as threats to these beneficial outcomes of young people's Internet use, simultaneously jeopardizing their wellbeing. As a response to these concerns, academics, policymakers, and experts in the field have over the years dedicated significant efforts to promote young people's online safety. Throughout the years, these online safety policies have undergone several transformations. The first online safety policies were originally designed with the principal objective of shielding young people from online risks as much as possible, starting from a rather restrictive and protective approach. However, it quickly became evident that restricting young people's exposure to any online contents to prevent them from being exposed to potentially damaging contents, also carried the consequence of curtailing the extent to which young people could benefit from positive opportunities. Therefore, policymakers increasingly strived towards an approach in which a balance was sought between an appropriate level of protection from online risk on the one hand, and promotion of the positive and beneficial opportunities the Internet has to offer on the other hand. One factor that seems crucial in this delicate balance of promoting opportunities on the one hand and reducing risk and harm on the other hand to protect young people's wellbeing, is digital literacy. The accumulation of evidence underscores the significance of digital literacy as a facilitator for young people to maximally benefit from the opportunities their Internet use offers while concurrently minimizing risk and harm. These studies contend that by stimulating young people's digital literacy, rather than protecting them by limiting their Internet use, young people will learn to deal with negative online experiences as they develop online resilience against harmful outcomes of risks. Yet, while it is hypothesized that this may be due to the fact that digitally literate young people are better at coping with negative online experiences and hence more resilient to harm from online risks, a thorough understanding of the mechanisms underlying the contribution of digital literacy to young people's abilities to cope with negative online experiences and hence build their online resilience against harm from online risks in order to protect their wellbeing is still lacking from the literature. Therefore, the first overarching aim of this research is to contribute to the evidence base on the value of digital literacy in building and strengthening young people's resilience to harmful outcomes from online risk experiences through the development of effective coping strategies, to safeguard their wellbeing. More specifically, the current research aims to understand (1) which coping strategies are the most effective in reducing potential harm and hence protecting young people's wellbeing from online risk, and (2) whether improving digital literacy strengthens young people's abilities to apply these effective coping strategies and to avoid using less effective coping strategies when dealing with a negative online experience, in an effort to protect their wellbeing. Some studies have suggested that to gain a thorough understanding of young people's online resilience, it is necessary to study their coping strategies using a risk-specific approach, as the coping strategies that young people employ to deal with a negative online experience can differ based on the nature of the risk. While previous research has predominantly focused on online risks such as cyberbullying, sexting, meeting strangers online, or exposure to shocking or violent images, research on the ways in which young people deal with online mis- and disinformation, an online risk that has recently received increasing attention from scholars, experts, and policymakers, is still remarkably scarce. Therefore, the second overarching aim of this research is to gain a better understanding of the skills and coping strategies that support young people in safely navigating an online landscape where online mis- and disinformation are inevitably present, and that serve as safeguards against potential harmful outcomes of exposure to these forms of mis- and disinformation. More specifically, the second part of this research aims (1) to gain a better understanding of the ways in which young people use credibility evaluations to determine whether a piece of online information or news is correct, (2) to gain a deeper insight into the particular credibility evaluation strategies they employ as coping strategies to arrive at a credibility judgment and avoid being misled by the potentially false information, and (3) to explore how digital literacy can support young people's coping with online mis- and disinformation.