Gen Z and Digital Literacy in the Labyrinth of Information on Social Media

While social media fundamentally changes how Gen Z acquires information and communicates, it increases the importance of digital literacy in the struggle against information pollution, AI-driven fake content, and disinformation.

For young people like Hoang Van Ban, born in 1997, and Nguyen Khanh Thao Oanh, social media has become one of the primary channels for following current events and accessing information. However, this situation also brings along an information labyrinth that makes it difficult to distinguish between true and false information.

Within the same feed, data from official news agencies can appear side by side with personal posts, sensational content, and unfounded opinions. Striking imagery and high engagement rates can blur the line between reality and speculation.

With the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies, extremely realistic fake images, videos, and audio can be produced. This paves the way for individuals to be portrayed as saying things they never said and for the creation of situations that do not reflect reality.

While Hoang Van Ban states that young people should proactively verify information rather than blindly believing the content they frequently encounter on social media, Vo Le Minh Anh, a teacher at Nguyen Van Thoai High School, expresses that the main challenge students face is the ability to independently evaluate large volumes of information.