Infocommunication competences of adolescents and young social media users

Abstract

The research addresses the topic of infocommunicational competences of adolescents and young people on social media. It brings the concepts of information sources, social media and competences, going through the competences in information and communication until converging in the infocommunicational competences. It addresses the subject of fake news and its most recent evolution, the deepfakes. Quantitative research is used to determine whether and how adolescents and young people validate information obtained through social media. Among the objectives of the study, the following stand out: to identify the use of social media as a source of information by adolescents and young people and why they use them; and describe the information evaluation process on social media in the light of the criteria proposed by the IFLA. It is concluded that, although not satisfactorily, adolescents and young people validate the information obtained through social media, showing the need for infocommunicational competences in the training of these users.