Design Implications for a Social and Collaborative Understanding of online Information Assessment Practices, Challenges and Heuristics

TL;DR

This study explores how young adults evaluate online information amidst social media and AI influences, revealing social, emotional, and wellbeing-driven heuristics in their decision-making processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel digital diary and interview methodology to uncover young people's social and emotional information assessment practices involving algorithms.

Findings

Young adults' information practices are motivated by social and emotional factors.

They often prioritize wellbeing over convenience in information evaluation.

Collaborative arrangements with algorithms influence their decision-making.

Abstract

The broader adoption of social media platforms (e.g., TikTok), combined with recent developments in Generative AI (GAI) technologies has had a transformative effect on many peoples' ability to confidently assess the veracity and meaning of information online. In this paper, building on recent related work that surfaced the social ways that young people evaluate information online, we explore the decision-making practices, challenges and heuristics involved in young adults' assessments of information online. To do so, we designed and conducted a novel digital diary study, followed by data-informed interviews with young adults. Our findings uncover the information practices of young adults including the social and emotional motivations for ignoring, avoiding, and engaging with online information and the ways this is entangled with collaborative arrangements with algorithms as agents. In our discussion we bring these findings in close dialogue with work on information sensibility and contribute rich insights into young peoples' information sensibility practices embedded within social worlds. Finally, we surface how such practices are attuned to prioritise wellbeing over convenience or other commonly associated sufficing heuristics.