Information-seeking behaviour and digital health literacy of schoolchildren in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results of an online survey as part of the GhoStiH study

Abstract

Background: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, schoolchildren were confronted with a flood of information on health and the coronavirus. Adequate handling of health information requires (digital) health literacy (dHL). The aim of this article is therefore to analyse the information-seeking behaviour and the extent of dHL of schoolchildren in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic according to their social background. Materials and methods: The online survey was conducted during the third lockdown, from March–July 2021, in Hesse and other German federal states. Students in secondary schools, associations and sports clubs were contacted. The online questionnaire was accessed by N = 1096 schoolchildren in grades 6–13 and n = 361 schoolchildren completed it in full. Health-related information-seeking behaviour (internet-based sources for health information, [digital] sources for information on the COVID-19 pandemic), dHL (Digital Health Literacy Instrument [DHLI]) as well as sociodemographic and socioeconomic background characteristics (gender, age, language spoken at home, type of school, subjective social status) were recorded and evaluated using uni-, bi- and multivariate analyses with SPSS (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Results: In all, 75.6% of schoolchildren regularly searched for digital health information about the coronavirus. 52.6% of the schoolchildren reported difficulties in dealing with digital health information. 49.8% of the schoolchildren reported difficulties in assessing the reliability of digital information on the coronavirus. The bi- and multivariate analyses indicated that the dHL differs according to subjective social status (SSS) in that those students with low or medium SSS (odds ratio = 2.57, 95% confidence interval 1.30–5.06, p = 0.006) more frequently have difficulties in dealing with digital health information on the COVID-19 pandemic than their peers in the comparison groups. The dHL did not differ significantly according to sociodemographic (gender, migration background) and other social characteristics (type of school attended, family wealth). Conclusion: Promotion of (d)HL among schoolchildren at school and individual level is an important issue for prevention and health promotion. Educational policy measures (e.g. in the form of “media literacy frameworks” for school media education in the federal states) should enable schools to take (d)HL into account in the context of media and health education in lessons, curricula and at all levels of and among all actors in schools (e.g. through organisational health literacy).