Abstract

Kazakhstani youth inhabit a cultural landscape shaped by Soviet legacies, post-independence nationalism, and global digital flows (Buribayev et al., 2025). Social media platforms – particularly TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube – have become arenas where competing narratives about identity, culture, and modernity circulate. While prior research has explored national identity, language ideologies, or media influence in Central Asia (Kamalova, 2025; Kurmanova et al., 2025; Lyanova, 2025; Nam & Mukhamejanova, 2025; Матжанова & Матжанова, 2023; Smagulova, 2023), very little has examined how young people cognitively negotiate competing value systems – understood here as the principles, beliefs, and priorities that shape judgments and decisions – within algorithm driven digital environments. Additional studies on youth digital media consumption, civic engagement, psychosocial values, and hybrid identity formation (British Council, 2023; Saparova et al., 2020; Sagikyzy et al., 2025; Tusupbekova et al., 2025) highlight that while youth actively engage with online content, the cognitive processes by which they reconcile local, national, and global influences remain underexplored.

Drawing on cognitive decoloniality, this study examines how young people critically reinterpret inherited epistemic frameworks and external influences in digital spaces. Cognitive decoloniality emphasizes that individuals are not passive recipients of cultural hierarchies but actively negotiate, resist, and hybridize knowledge systems, making social media a critical site for epistemic engagement. The research employs a qualitative digital discourse analysis of 100–200 publicly available posts and short videos curated using hashtags and content related to Kazakh identity, language revival, cultural traditions, and contemporary lifestyle narratives, including references to Western and Russian influences. Each post is systematically coded for themes of identity negotiation, value alignment, resistance, and hybridization, with critical discourse analysis applied to examine how language, visuals, and storytelling strategies reflect youth’s cognitive engagement with competing knowledge systems.

Preliminary findings suggest that social media operate as cognitive spaces of decolonial negotiation, where youth selectively adopt, reinterpret, or resist dominant narratives to construct hybrid value systems blending global and local meanings. The study contributes theoretically by extending cognitive decoloniality to the digital domain, highlighting the intersection of youth culture, algorithmically mediated digital spaces, and identity formation, and demonstrating that value transformation in Central Asia is actively co-constructed rather than inherited. Practically, it provides insights for media literacy programs, educational initiatives, and cultural engagement strategies, equipping youth to navigate complex digital information flows while sustaining pluralistic value frameworks.