Digital Literacy of Teenagers in Kulonprogo District, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Digital technology and media exert a negative effect on the spread of information and news. Information is running heavily, fast and unavoidably, and even a flood of information occurs in virtual world. As a commodity, information can be sold, shared, duplicated, created, misunderstood, distorted and even taken by others. The phenomenon of cyber society is in the complex communication model structure. Basically, each people are forced to be aware or to have knowledge on technology and digital media (digital media literacy) based on communication and information technology as a requirement to become consumer, information distributor or even producer. To give the teens the good ethical and communication awareness in virtual world, data is needed on the level of understanding among students who use technology and digital media, called digital literacy. The data of teenager digital literacy at Kulonprogo district would be the primary data for this research. This research used a quantitative research method with descriptive format. Data of research was collected through surveying teenagers using online questionnaire. This research identified that the highest score of 80.87 was found in Cultural and Social Understanding dimension, while the lowest score of 68.68 was found in Creativity dimension. The results showed that the teenagers’ digital literacy in the Kulonprogo district was at the advance level with average value of 75.75.