On April 22nd, 2026, Ion Kalinderu College Bușteni, Prahova County, became a space for meaningful civic dialogue about one of democracy's most pressing challenges: building resilience against digital disinformation. The "Resilience Lab - CivicHype EU Sprint" event brought together 54 students aged 16–17 from Grade XI to engage in rapid co-creation, designing practical counter-disinformation solutions while exploring media literacy needs and articulating civic priorities for democratic participation in the digital age.
What happened: Creating space for reflection and co-creation
The event, facilitated by Teodora Akinola, Vice-president at GEYC, in collaboration with Ion Kalinderu College Bușteni, employed an innovative participatory methodology designed to capture authentic youth insights while transforming individual experiences into collective learning. Rather than lecturing about media literacy, the assembly invited young people to become active problem-solvers and designers of solutions addressing real disinformation challenges.
The event combined interactive brainstorming on digital resilience with rapid co-creation sprints. Facilitators introduced ten key disinformation categories: political information manipulation, phishing, viral misinformation, clickbait, deepfakes, health misinformation, panic messaging, climate disinformation, spam, and fraud.
Ten mixed student teams then designed counter-disinformation solutions within time constraints, documenting their recommendations through self-produced short videos. This innovative format allowed students to exercise communication, teamwork, video production, and media literacy skills simultaneously. The self-produced video methodology proved particularly effective for youth expression, allowing ideas to flow through digital creation aligned with their communication styles.
The event concluded with collective reflection sessions where participants discussed patterns, shared reactions, and brainstormed individual actions, school-level initiatives, and community-wide prevention strategies. This collective analysis transformed isolated concerns into systemic understanding, allowing participants to recognize that peers faced similar challenges navigating digital information ecosystems.
What young people are experiencing: Digital vulnerability and uncertainty
Through brainstorming and group discussions, participants articulated profound vulnerability to information manipulation. The assembly encountered situations where friends disagreed about information authenticity, where content seemed sensational or untrustworthy. Participants faced conflicting information across different sources and encountered unclear or suspicious sources regularly.
When discussing these experiences, participants reported skepticism, confusion, frustration, and concern as primary emotional responses. Notably, participants emphasized feeling isolated from meaningful adult guidance—parents either restricted access without education or themselves fell prey to misinformation. Students expressed frustration at being blamed for engaging with online trends rather than supported, and feeling their voices unheard in discussions about media they navigate daily.
Participants demonstrated sophisticated awareness of information distortion mechanisms - they recognized not only obvious falsehoods but also subtle forms of manipulation like contextual stripping, sensationalism, and algorithmic curation. Concerns included fake news and misinformation, information taken out of context, distinguishing opinion from fact, and peer manipulation discussions.
What young people need: Skills, institutions, and systemic change
Participants identified concrete, actionable needs for building confidence evaluating trustworthy information. They wanted to know where information comes from and how to verify sources. They sought practical fact-checking skills. Understanding how algorithms work and better tools and features on social media platforms emerged as additional priorities.
Notably, schools and teachers emerged as essential actors in supporting media literacy development - equally vital as parents and family. Young people emphasized their own role in peer education and democratic participation. This reveals participants view media literacy as a collective endeavor requiring institutional support, intergenerational dialogue, and shared civic commitment - not primarily an individual responsibility.
Critically, participants articulated needs beyond individual skills: permanent school-based discussion spaces where they could raise content concerns without judgment; curriculum evolution addressing emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence; and intergenerational mentorship replacing restriction or dismissal.
Emerging civic insights: Beyond individual literacy
The most significant insights emerged during collective discussion of shared experiences and co-created solutions. Participants expressed surprise discovering diversity in peers' experiences - some encountered disinformation regularly, others less frequently. This discovery process proved educationally valuable, normalizing concerns while broadening perspectives on digital literacy challenges.
Participants articulated Stop-Think-Verify decision-making frameworks applicable across disinformation categories, recognizing verification before sharing as a moral obligation essential to democracy. They moved from viewing themselves as passive victims to active problem-solvers, proposing concrete systemic changes rather than accepting information uncertainty as inevitable.
Key recommendations included: frequent school discussions on current digital issues; curriculum evolution addressing emerging technologies (especially AI); safe spaces for debating controversial topics; and intergenerational mentorship where adults genuinely listen and guide rather than restrict or dismiss youth perspectives.
Most significantly, participants demonstrated conviction that trustworthy information ecosystems require institutional responsibility and ethical gatekeeping, not individual skill-building alone. They expect institutions - schools, platforms, journalists, governments - to bear ethical responsibility for maintaining information integrity.
Implications for democratic participation
These insights point toward fundamental truths about media literacy and democratic health. Young people understand that trustworthy information systems constitute essential democratic infrastructure. They recognize that individual skill-building alone cannot counter systemic design promoting disinformation. They expect institutional actors to bear ethical responsibility for maintaining information integrity.
The event raised awareness among participants, educators, and policymakers. The co-created video outputs and collective recommendations provide concrete evidence of youth experiences, priorities, and problem-solving capacity - moving beyond speculation to evidence-based understanding of what young people need and can contribute. It also demonstrated that structured, creative, school-based initiatives effectively mobilize young people - particularly those from marginalized communities - toward democratic participation and institutional change.
"CivicHype EU: Resilience Lab" was part of the local activities organized in the frame of the "CivicHype EU: Youth Engage, Debate, Influence, Connect" CERV Project.