DEBAT&S

Part of the Reboot Social Media Lab
Children today are born into the social media world, often becoming active users by the age of two onwards. What we currently do not know much about are the developmental, social and cognitive mechanisms underlying young children’s social media usage. The DEBAT&S team seeks to learn more about the digital information literacy that children possess, aiming to propose measures and recommendations concerning their online learning behavior.

Fake information on social media and its processing by young children

The team around Azzurra Ruggeri, Francesca Bonalumi, Costanza de Simone and Hande Melis Altunay examine children's online learning and sharing of (mis)information in the context of social media. More specifically, the DEBAT&S project wants to find out how the presentation of information affects the detection and sharing of (false) information on social media to understand the cognitive, emotional and social processes underlying people's online decisions.

Topics, activities & formats

The team develops a set of educational interventions which are tested in different classroom settings. Based on these insights into the developmental trajectories of children's search, comprehension, and exchange of online information, target group-specific measures and recommendations can be formulated concerning their online learning behavior.