With the growing prevalence of online mis/disinformation encountered by children, digital media literacy has become an urgent concern. Existing research emphasizes cognitive models, focusing on individual reasoning and specific quantitative criteria to classify people’s information literacy. However, critics argue that focusing solely on cognitive approach neglects the social, emotional, and cultural contexts that shape how mis/disinformation is created and spread. In this study, we expand beyond the cognitive model by examining socioemotional learning (SEL) and sociocultural (SC) perspectives. To explore how children conceptualize mis/disinformation through these lenses, we conducted 26 co-design workshops with children ages 6–11 over a 2.5-year period. Our findings highlight children’s awareness of emotional responses, peer pressure, financial incentives, and the importance of community support. These insights contribute to HCI by foregrounding the need for design approaches that integrate cognitive, SEL, and SC dimensions. We present an integrated framework to inform how community groups can support children and design recommendations that address the growing sophistication of mis/disinformation.

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has ignited discussions surrounding its potential to enhance creative pursuits. However, distinctions between children’s and adult’s creative needs exist, which is important when considering the possibility of GenAI for children’s creative usage. Building upon work in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), fostering children’s computational thinking skills, this study explores interactions between children (aged 7-13) and GenAI tools through methods of participatory design. We seek to answer two questions: (1) How do children in co-design workshops perceive GenAI tools and their usage for creative works? and (2) How do children navigate the creative process while using GenAI tools? How might these interactions support their confidence in their ability to create? Our findings contribute a model that describes the potential contexts underpinning child-GenAI creative interactions and explores implications of this model for theories of creativity, design, and use of GenAI as a constructionist tool for creative self-efficacy.