What is Media Literacy?
There is no doubt that people, children especially, learn from all the media that they see, hear and experience. And we are surrounded by media - TV, apps, websites, video games, magazines, news sites, signs, digital billboards, packaging, radio, social media, and all kinds of advertising.
The average kindergartner sees about 70 media messages every day. By the time they are in high-school, teens are spending more than one-third of their day using media.
Few of us fully understand how the media we interact with affects us and our society. But how do we sort through the noise? The key to the solution is Media Literacy.
Media literacy is a set of skills that helps people, not just youth, analyze the content of media messages that they receive and that they send. To apply media literacy skills, we can ask 5 Key Questions “Who created this message?”
What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? How might different people understand this message differently? What lifestyles, values and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message? Why is this message being sent? This powerful key unlocks a world that empowers all of us to be better digital citizens as we consume media, produce, and share our own stories. What would it feel like to live in this world? Perhaps we’d have less fear, more empathy, and make better decisions.
So how do we create this world? We each have a role to play. First things first: every child needs media literacy skills. We can all advocate for media literacy education with teachers, administrators, parents, librarians, and government. If each of us make a practice of using the 5 Key Questions for media literacy in all our activities and with all the people we encounter, we'll all move closer to the more positive and well informed civic engagement that we want and deserve.