Research on the Importance of Cybersecurity Education on the Cultivation of Healthy Social Mindset of College Students

This paper first discusses the basic functions and basic ways of network security education, then explores the basic characteristics of students’ social mentality, analyzes the main influencing factors of college students’ healthy social mentality, and the influence of network security education on college students’ social mentality, and based on this, proposes an innovative path of network security parenting. Then, the students’ network security literacy and healthy social mentality were analyzed for differences, and the influence of network security education on their critical thinking ability was studied using ANOVA. The use of heterogeneity analysis was used to investigate changes in students’ healthy social mindset at both high and low levels of cybersecurity education. The results showed that the effect of cybersecurity education on students’ total critical thinking ability was significant at the 1% level, F=3.219, η²=0.013. Students’ healthy social mindset was affected by both high and low cybersecurity education levels, with substantial coefficients of 0.00189 and 0.00152, respectively. The present study systematically examines the mechanism of the influence of cybersecurity education on college students’ social mindset and the path of influence, which helps to enrich the research paradigm on college students’ social mentality.