The relationship between health literacy and health-seeking behavior in late adolescent college students: A cross-sectional study

This study examines the relationship between health literacy and health information seeking behavior in late adolescent students at Surabaya State University through a cross-sectional study. Health literacy is defined as an individual's ability to acquire, understand, evaluate, and use health information for informed decision-making. A total of 229 students aged 17-19 years were respondents who were voluntarily taken using the HSL-EU-16 questionnaire. The results showed that the majority of respondents had a sufficient level of health literacy with an average score of 14.08, where women had a slightly higher score than men. Health information search behavior was dominated by the use of online media (95.6%) and social media (99.1%), with the frequency of searches more than twice a week for most respondents (67.7%). The analysis showed a significant relationship between health literacy and the type of information search media and social media use, but not with gender, ownership of health applications on smartphones, and frequency of online searches. These findings underscore the importance of using digital media as the main means of increasing health literacy among students to support appropriate health decision-making and healthy lifestyles. Recommendations are given for the development of health literacy-based education programs and applications that are adaptive to the needs of the younger generation.