Rethinking Misinformation: A Holistic Community Model for Youth Resilience through Socioemotional Learning and Sociocultural Design

With the growing prevalence of online mis/disinformation encountered by children, digital media literacy has become an urgent concern. Existing research emphasizes cognitive models, focusing on individual reasoning and specific quantitative criteria to classify people’s information literacy. However, critics argue that focusing solely on cognitive approach neglects the social, emotional, and cultural contexts that shape how mis/disinformation is created and spread. In this study, we expand beyond the cognitive model by examining socioemotional learning (SEL) and sociocultural (SC) perspectives. To explore how children conceptualize mis/disinformation through these lenses, we conducted 26 co-design workshops with children ages 6–11 over a 2.5-year period. Our findings highlight children’s awareness of emotional responses, peer pressure, financial incentives, and the importance of community support. These insights contribute to HCI by foregrounding the need for design approaches that integrate cognitive, SEL, and SC dimensions. We present an integrated framework to inform how community groups can support children and design recommendations that address the growing sophistication of mis/disinformation.