The ability to use the internet has become a necessary part of maintaining one’s health. Whether it’s to find information, explore wellness tips, get exercise advice, or manage appointments and prescriptions, having strong digital health literacy skills plays a role in positive health outcomes.
Yet, in a study conducted in 2021, over 90% of participants scored below the threshold measuring digital health competency, regardless of education level. Support is needed to help adults—especially adults with low literacy and digital literacy skills—effectively use online health resources, which can often be dense and difficult to navigate.
Authors Jill Castek, University of Arizona, and Tyler H. J. Frank, Clark College and University of Arizona, outline the growing need for contextualized digital health literacy in their Research Digest “Digital Literacies for Digital Health Realities,” published in the current issue of our Adult Literacy Education research journal.
Castek and Frank identify four components of digital health literacies that adult learners would benefit from increased instruction in:
- Navigating online health resources: Because the quality of health information online is not consistent, it’s important to teach adults how to find information that is both relevant and trustworthy. This involves examining multiple sources to determine what sources are reliable and who you can trust as an expert.
- Checking the reliability of health information: To determine reliability, we need to teach adults how to critically evaluate the information they encounter. Adult learners would greatly benefit from developing a critical mindset to determine relevancy, accuracy, reliability, commercial bias, and more. This is important no matter what someone is researching, but it is vital when it comes to accessing and using health information.
- Managing and using digital tools: We need to support adults as the world of digital resources is constantly changing. With AI and more digital tools constantly entering the market, it is important that adults understand how to use them to achieve their goals.
- Learning digital problem solving: Providing practice facing situations online that are challenging and require problem solving will help adults learn how to successfully navigate the evolving digital landscape. Having more experienced digital users providing demonstrations to less experienced adult learners helps build knowledge and understanding of how to approach safety, online privacy, and more.
Adult educators have a lot of potential when it comes to helping learners improve their digital health literacy skills. Read the full research digest for their research-based recommendations on how to approach this instruction.