Adolescent Social Media Information Literacy Outside of School: A Scoping Review of the Literacy and Educational Technology Literature

Abstract

The information literacy practices of adolescents on social media outside of school are worth considering, since adolescents use social media near ubiquitously and must grapple with all types of content they encounter incidentally or intentionally. This scoping review followed the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) to examine the extent and nature of scholarship on this topic from the perspective of educational technology and literacy scholarship, as both fields are uniquely poised to collaborate on this interdisciplinary topic. Surprisingly, only four articles fit the scope of our review. The literature found, and not found, revealed several themes. These themes were the imprecise use of keywords across scholarship, use of social media for community support, exposure to incidental information, evidence for different literacy practices on social media, and the need for addressing social media information literacy in school. Opportunities for future work and collaborative research between both fields is also discussed.