The effect of secondary school students' digital identity privacy skills and technology literacy levels on cybersecurity awareness in online games

This study aims to examine the effect of secondary school students' online privacy and digital literacy levels on cyber security awareness in online games. The study examined, the characteristics of secondary school students such as cyber security awareness status, online privacy awareness status, digital literacy status and online gaming habits and the relationships between these variables. The study group of the research consists of 1480 secondary school 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students studying in the city centre and districts of Tokat under the Ministry of National Education in the 2021-2022 academic year. Students were reached voluntarily in face-to-face environments. The causal-comparative research model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the research. Personal information form, "Digital Literacy" scale developed by Pala (2019), "Online Privacy Awareness" scale developed by Korkmaz, Vergili and Töngel (2019) to determine online gaming habits and socio-demographic status of secondary school students participating in the research as data collection tool and the "Cyber Security Awareness" scale, which was prepared in line with the research purpose, was used. During the analysis of the obtained data, SPSS 22.0 statistical program was used to analyze the quantitative data. The data obtained from the scales used in the research were analyzed using percentage, frequency, ANOVA, correlation and linear-multiple regression according to the variable types. According to the results obtained from the analyzes, it was concluded that there is a significant and positive relationship between cyber security awareness and digital literacy status. It was concluded that there is a significant and positive relationship between cyber security awareness and online privacy awareness. It was concluded that both variables (digital literacy and online privacy awareness) have a positive and significant relationship to cyber security awareness. According to the research results, it was understood that the cyber security awareness of secondary school students in online games is in good condition. In addition, it was concluded that the students participating in the research mostly use mobile phones as an online game playing platform and they play games in 1-2 hours as their daily online game playing time.