BIO

My name is Mallory Lloyd, and I am a current sophomore at Florida State University from Sarasota, Florida. I am interested in research regarding Abnormal Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Social Psychology. I am currently double majoring in Psychology and Human Development & Family Science, and I want to be a clinical psychologist in the future. I want to attend graduate school and continue doing research in order to work toward this goal. I am interested in helping others, and I want to continue this passion by participating in clinical research.

Teens, Teachers, and Online Information

Abstract

With social media growing in popularity day by day, especially from teenagers’ use, the question as to how these teenagers interpret the information they see online comes into play. How teens interpret online information, and how their teachers facilitate and enhance this online learning is the main focus of this study. Previous studies have researched teens’ choices on which social media platform they rely on the most to obtain news. However, these results are vague, and little research has been done to take an in-depth approach as to why teenagers gravitate towards a “media choice.” These research studies have made it a point to determine the top social media sites used by teens, and the main devices they use to access these social media sites. Keeping this in mind, this research fails to determine how teens use this information in their daily lives, especially when they are in school. Interviews were conducted in which teen participants describe their top social media platforms, and the information they encounter on these platforms. Data is collected through a Qualtrics survey for a week in which participants submit screenshot artifacts from their media encounters, as well as a video diary in which they describe their media usage and encounters for the week. This is an ongoing study, so the anticipated findings are that teens encounter a variety of information online, but may not fact check, research further, or talk about these issues with their teachers in school.

Keywords: Teens, online, fact checking, news