Abstract
The article analyzes the sociological role of media education in strengthening digital media security among young people in Kazakhstan. The purpose of the study is to conceptualize media education not only as a set of technical skills or fact-checking procedures, but also as a social mechanism for developing informational resilience, responsible communication, and civic participation in a mediatized society. The article is based on a scientific-analytical design that combines conceptual analysis, problem-comparative interpretation, and theoretical model-building. The theoretical framework draws on media literacy studies, critical media education, mediatization theory, uses and gratifications research, communication power theory, and recent scholarship on misinformation and digital risks. Publicly available analytical data on Kazakhstan’s digital environment are used to situate the argument in the national context. The analysis shows that young people’s digital media security should be understood as a three-level phenomenon: cognitive security, related to source evaluation and resistance to manipulation; institutional security, dependent on the coordination of education, family, media policy, and digital platforms; and ethical-communicative security, involving digital responsibility, personal data safety, and respectful online participation. The article argues that the rapid expansion of internet and social media use in Kazakhstan creates new educational and civic opportunities, while also increasing exposure todisinformation, emotional manipulation, algorithmic enclosure, and unsafe data practices. The scholarly contribution of the article lies in proposing a multi-level model of media education as a social infrastructure for youth media security.