Navigating Digital Realities: Understanding Young People's Engagement With Social Media for News, Political Information, and Identity Formation

ABSTRACT Social media platforms have become central spaces for young people to engage with a vast array of digital content, significantly influencing their identities, beliefs, and behaviors. By examining think‐aloud and interview data, this study investigated how adolescents conceptualize social media as sources of news, political information, and tools for identity negotiation. The results informed the creation of a conceptual map outlining how the process of information‐seeking occurs through social media texts. Findings revealed a nuanced relationship between young people and social media, with participants conceptualizing social media texts as poor quality, but engaging frequently. While young people demonstrated some awareness of the need to verify content and awareness of algorithmic influences shaping their feeds, they often failed to critically engage with the content, which limited their ability to form a comprehensive understanding of complex issues, potentially hindering their capacity for informed discourse. Data revealed that young people passively interacted with social media texts through the algorithm, though they engaged in reciprocal algorithmic manipulation, where they consciously curated their algorithmic output. This research offers critical insights for educators, policymakers, and social media platforms aiming to foster media literacy and promote informed, responsible digital citizenship amongst youth. Ultimately, the findings emphasize the need for media literacy education to support critical thinking and lateral reading skills, empowering youth to navigate the digital information landscape effectively.