SCiDEV has conducted the Mapping of Youth Participation in Digital Democracy in Albania, the first report of its kind in Albania aiming to provide a baseline knowledge resource on youth’s level of digital literacy and online participation to inform further youth initiatives and contribute to the development of policies and practices that support effective youth participation in digital democracy.

Quantitative and qualitative findings gathered by survey and focus groups suggest that despite 79.8% of youth in Albania regularly keep up with social media and are informed, only 19.6% engage in digital activism, showing a strong trend of slacktivism-minimal engagement such as sharing content without further involvement of youth.

Key barriers that hinder digital participation among youth are:
An individualistic consumerist approach of using social media
Fear of being a victim of cancel culture and/or bullying
Lack of trust in institutions due to perceptions of them being ineffective to tackle cyber threats youth is facing. Youth are more eager to report issues at media outlets rather than the responsible authorities.
Limited access to technology, mainly for youth coming from disadvantaged background

In addition to limiting perceptions and emotions such as fear, another factor that may be hindering meaningful youth participation in the digital sphere are limited understanding of their digital rights. While more than 80% of the respondents from the survey believe their digital rights are as important as their rights in the physical world, less than half the respondents (46.5%) understand what digital rights are. The most well-known digital rights among participants are centred around privacy (25.2%) freedom of expression (22.4%) and data protection (16.8%), while when it comes to cyber security only about half of the participants report a good understanding of key principles.