Towards safe and secure youth online: Embracing the concept of media and information literacy

Macedonian youth need strong literacy skills to participate constructively in a pluralist democracy facing complex domestic, regional and global challenges. In addition, relevant stakeholders need the capacity to sustain youth in this endeavor. The best way to accomplish this is to utilize the UNESCO suggestion to develop a strategy that will address the issue by converging the approach of Media Literacy and Information Literacy into Media and Information Literacy. Therefore, the study suggests this approach giving valuable contextual framework that can enhance the Macedonian youth in seeking and exploiting opportunities by using information and communication technologies and social media applications while remaining safe from negative residual effects that will continua evolve. Moreover, the study represents a small step in raising the voice for coherent and tangible efforts designed to build relevant stakeholders’ capacities to improve Macedonian media and information literacy.