Abstract
This conceptual study examines how media literacy education may support the development of self-regulated learning and critical thinking during emerging adulthood. Drawing on developmental psychology, metacognitive theory, self-regulated learning, and scholarship on digital information evaluation, the article develops an integrated instructional framework for university students. A narrative, theory-informed synthesis is used to identify mechanisms linking goal setting, attention control, evidence appraisal, reflective judgment, and feedback. The resulting framework proposes five instructional phases-orientation, inquiry, verification, reasoned communication, and reflection-and suggests observable indicators and an evaluation design for future research. The paper does not report original experimental data. Its contribution is a psychologically grounded model that distinguishes information-verification skills from the motivational and metacognitive processes required to apply them consistently.
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