Digital Literacy and Psychology

Digital literacy and mental health: Navigating the impact of social media on youth well-being.

Digital literacy is broader than just knowing how to use technology. It is about understanding how digital content, such as the social media, affects the users. Digital literacy involves mastering the skills to navigate and interpret the vast digital landscape responsibly, as well as the emotional intelligence to manage and understand the psychological impacts of digital interactions.

Social media is a big part of young people’s lives, and how they handle it can affect their mental health. By being digitally literate, young people can better navigate the challenges of online spaces. This means they can use social media in a way that is safer and healthier for their minds, helping them to deal with the unique challenges posed by these ever-evolving platforms, such as misinformation or the pressures they feel from comparing themselves to others on these platforms.

This project embarks on a critical exploration of how young people's interaction with social media impacts their mental health, with a special focus on the role of digital literacy. In an era where social media is deeply ingrained in the lives of the youth, this project aims to understand how their digital skills and understanding affect their emotional well-being. The process includes investigating whether a higher level of digital literacy can provide young individuals with better tools to manage their mental health in a digital world full of challenges and opportunities. This project seeks to offer insights and strategies to empower young people to use social media positively and safely, enhancing their overall mental well-being.

This project takes a more psychological approach to examine how digital literacy affects the mental health of young people by influencing their consumption patterns and behaviour on social media platforms. The core idea is to investigate whether an increased level of digital literacy can equip young individuals with better tools to manage their mental well-being in the face of potential negative impacts from social media use.

The key components of this project include:

• Conducting surveys of youth to assess their understanding of digital literacy and its relation to their social media habits.
• Using psychological scales to measure aspects of mental health such as self-esteem, anxiety, and sleep quality in relation to social media usage patterns.
• Create training programmes to improve youth’s digital literacy and track changes over time for studying the effects of digital literacy on mental health.
• Collect the qualitative data through interviews or focus groups to explore youth’s experiences regarding social media and mental health after completing the training programme.
• Conduct the comparative analysis to investigate the mental health outcomes based on the digitally literate versus less digitally literate state of each individual to highlight the potential protective effects of digital literacy.
• Conduct cross-cultural studies to understand if and how the impact of digital literacy on mental health varies in different cultural contexts.
• Explore the implications for policy, such as the need for digital literacy education in the university as part of the student experience.

The project aims to produce a comprehensive understanding of how digital literacy intersects with mental health in the context of social media as well as provide insights into how policymakers can better support youths and promote mental well-being in an increasingly digital world.