Engl. transl.: Connected to media. Romanian youth's interaction with media

“The data confirm that Romanian youth live in a mobile internet era, with smartphones being the most used device for accessing the internet. (...) In their own words, ‘to be informed’ is seen as having a positive value (it is an ‘important’, ‘vital’, ‘good’ thing), which involves a large amount of knowledge (‘knowing lots of things’, ‘knowing everything’), in general situations (‘to be able to understand the world in which we live’) or in specific situations (‘to be able to take part in a conversation’). In some youth’s view, ‘to be informed’ has an instrumental value (‘it helps you to…’), whereas for others, it represents a standing alone value. When youngsters were asked to self-assess the level of information by referring to their peers, the results varied substantially with the domain to which they referred. Thus, the majority of our respondents considered themselves to be ‘average well-informed’ on topics that are of interest for adolescents or mondenities, whereas on current affairs they consider themselves less informed than their peers. (...) Although they highly value the internet, youth know they cannot trust all information they find online, more than three out of four youth understand the fact that some sites listed by the search engine they use could contain partially or wrong information. (...) Few of the Romanian youth do have an online participation, most of them ‘consuming’ information they find online. Thus, although 7 out of ten youth look up for information online when interested by a topic, one out of two said they do not use to share online articles on their account on social media network. When they share, one out of four youths share articles without any prior check of the truthfulness of that content.” (Velicu et al., 2019, pp. 88-91; coder's translation)