Is this risky? Accessing Digital Literacy Level among Young Adult's in TRNC

Year 2019, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 25 - 32, 01.06.2019

Muhammad Bello Nawaila Sezer Kanbul Saleh Waziri Mustapha

Abstract

Young adulthood is an important development time period for humans where majority of them spend most of their time with technology. Which constitute all the millennials of whom are digital natives. Most of the people in this category pride themselves as tech-savvy and are so immersed in technology to the extent that drawing a boundary between offline and online is difficult if not impossible. This overconfidence most often than not leads this young people into committing risky behaviors online. Global research institute interested with children are now paying a very close attention when it comes to children’s right in the digital world. Whereas internet policy was design to suit adult internet users. leaving the young adult vulnerable. This research work explores the digital world of this young adults by conducting a mixed method research where open-ended questionnaires were given to 512 randomly selected undergraduate students of Near East University of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and an interview was conducted to 50 randomly selected students among the 512 for the purpose of data collection. With the aim of associate evidence with the continued global discourse regarding rights and wellbeing of people in the digital world with special focus on internet access, level of digital literacy, technological usage and applications, risk, vulnerabilities, mediation and other online habits. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS software version 20. The questionnaire shows high reliability with Cronbach alpha at 0.89. The result shows that young adults of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are conscious of their online behavior although majority confessed to not undergoing digital literacy classes. It was also noted that majority of the young adults accept friendship requests from everyone but will really agree to meet social media friends in real life. Majority of the respondents say they are conscious of what they share online and the data they gave but a significant number of them confess to vulgar chats.

Keywords

Digital Literacy, Digital Right, Internet Risk, Internet Security, Young Adult

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