Evolving Digital Information Practices: How Emerging Adults Use AI Tools (DIP)

Description

Since the early 2000s, search engines and smartphones have transformed access to information. With the rapid diffusion of AI applications such as chatbots, everyday media practices are entering a new phase of disruption – at a time when misinformation is widely perceived as a major threat.

This project focuses on young adults aged 18 to 29, who spend nearly eight hours online daily while navigating transitions such as education and entry into the workforce. In this formative life stage, media habits and political values become consolidated. Information practices, understood as behaviors to satisfy knowledge needs, are unequally distributed across social groups.

With the spread of AI, existing inequalities risk being amplified. Anchored in the digital well-being framework, the study employs a representative online vignette survey of 1,200 young adults in Switzerland. It examines information repertoires, social structuring, and the role of AI, contributing to debates on digital governance and well-being.