A three-country research effort has confirmed what many educators have long suspected: young people who grew up with smartphones in hand are not automatically equipped to navigate them critically. DIGI-Story, an Erasmus+ project funded by the European Union, has spent its initial phase mapping that gap across Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic, and the resulting picture is one of confident users who nonetheless struggle with the mechanics of misinformation, algorithmic curation and digital ethics.
The research combined questionnaires with qualitative interviews to understand how adolescents and young adults actually behave online, rather than how they believe they behave. The findings pointed to a discrepancy between perceived competence and real practice: many respondents rated themselves as digitally fluent while showing limited understanding of how personalised feeds are built or how to verify a dubious claim before sharing it. This mirrors a broader pattern seen across digital literacy research generally, where familiarity with an interface is often mistaken for critical understanding of what happens behind it - much as consumers comparing privacy tools, such as when reviewing VPN pricing compared across providers, often focus on surface features while overlooking the underlying technical safeguards that matter most. VPN pricing compared
Based on these findings, the consortium developed an Online Behavioural Guide structured around six interconnected themes. It addresses everyday habits on social platforms, the dynamics of information and disinformation, responsible content consumption and creation, data protection and online safety, the logic behind content personalisation and algorithms, and the management of one's digital footprint and privacy settings. Together, these themes form a practical framework rather than an abstract curriculum, intended to help young users recognise manipulation, protect personal data and make deliberate choices about what they post and share.
Storytelling as a Teaching Tool
Rather than relying on conventional lectures or dense policy language, DIGI-Story delivers its content through transmedia storytelling: videos, podcasts, comics and infographics designed to meet young audiences in formats they already use daily. This approach reflects a growing consensus among educators that digital literacy sticks best when it is experienced through familiar media rather than imposed as abstract theory. A comic explaining algorithmic bias or a short podcast unpacking a viral hoax can convey concepts that a formal lesson might fail to land.
A Cross-Border Collaboration
The project is run by three organisations - EduHive in the Czech Republic, Neotalentway in Spain and Storytellme in Portugal - pooling distinct national perspectives into a shared European resource. Its intended audience extends beyond students to educators and youth workers, who are often expected to teach digital responsibility without adequate training or materials themselves. By equipping these intermediaries as well as young people directly, DIGI-Story aims to embed media literacy into everyday educational practice rather than treating it as a one-off workshop topic.
Why It Matters Beyond the Classroom
The stakes extend well past individual study habits. As disinformation campaigns grow more sophisticated and algorithmic systems increasingly shape what young people see, understanding these mechanisms becomes a matter of democratic participation and personal safety alike. DIGI-Story's ambition - moving from theoretical awareness to practical, applied skills - reflects a wider policy shift across the EU toward treating digital literacy as a civic competence, not merely a technical one.