A 2023 Gallup survey found that US teens spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on social media. How does this compare to the amount of time children spend on other forms of media? In 2018, less than 20% of teens reported reading a book or newspaper for pleasure, compared to over 80% saying they used social media every day. The messages that children are exposed to on social media and the ways that they are conveyed are very different from the ways that traditional media is interpreted. How should children learn to distinguish between different types of posts, accounts, and platforms online when they are not taught how to navigate the web? Beyond just information literacy, children’s ability to learn the social skills needed to be empathetic is impaired when their social media interactions are entirely behind a screen. It is difficult for children to distinguish fact from opinion when social media constantly bombards them with decontextualized and emotionally manipulative content. This is where social media literacy steps in to provide a framework for how to educate children on the ways to use social media in a productive and healthy way.
Social media literacy is the ability to critically analyze, evaluate, and engage with social media content and networks, considering the self’s role in constructing and consuming digital content. Social media literacy involves understanding how personal choices, social connections, and platform structures influence information exposure, identity, behavior, mood, and social interactions. It requires self-awareness of one’s motivations and biases, recognition of the evolving nature of digital platforms, and responsible participation in online discourse to contribute to the collective good. By learning the basics of digital literacy, media literacy, and navigating relationships online, children can be equipped with the skills needed to flourish in our current social environment. These skills are essential to navigating the media landscape that children grow up in during the digital age.
From basic reading to an understanding of the world
Literacy as a term has had a long history as a nebulous concept. The original focus was on educating children and adults on the basics of being able to read the written word, what we commonly think of when we refer to “literacy.” From 1900 to 2023, the world literacy rate (defined as the share of adults aged 15 and older who can read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life) rose from about 21% to around 87%. As the levels of simple reading literacy increased across the developed world, literacy began to expand in the scope of the definition. It began to have connotations of gaining a broader social understanding that can be learned through the act of reading. Not only did it begin to have social implications, but it also began to refer to concepts beyond the scope of reading, such as computer literacy, health literacy, and perhaps most importantly, media literacy.
Media literacy began to be implemented in classrooms alongside traditional reading instruction as educators began to realize the importance of recognizing the formal features of different mediums and how they can be interpreted in relation to each other. Media literacy requires students to produce media that effectively conveys messages in responsible ways as well as think critically about the ways that various sources impact their understanding of information. This skill has become increasingly important in a rapidly connecting world and an increasingly saturated media landscape. Despite this recognition, as of 2023, only 19 US states have media literacy required by law in school curriculum.
Updating literacy for the era of social media
Since the 1970s, this definition has ultimately remained the same, with a focus on mass media messages and understanding the differences between mediums in how they convey their information and bias. However, with the emergence and widespread adoption of social media, educators began to realize an important distinction between social media and other traditional forms of media. As early as 2011, we began to see the term social media literacy used in academic papers, but in 2014 the term began to gain wider traction with a widely cited paper that examined how children develop in a social media context.
In Sonia Livingstone’s article published in the 39th edition of the journal Communications, “Developing social media literacy: How children learn to interpret risky opportunities on social network sites,” she outlines two avenues through which children learn the competencies needed to effectively navigate social media. In 2022, an even more advanced and fleshed-out vision of social media literacy was published in the journal New Media & Society. “Social media literacy: A conceptual framework” written by Hyunyi Cho, Julie Cannon, Rachel Lopez, and Wenbo Li has since become an influential paper in defining social media literacy, being cited nearly 200 times. In this article, the authors argue that the focus of social media literacy must be on understanding the self as embedded in the media content they see and not just purely the analysis of the media content. As described by these authors, social media content blurs the boundaries between personal communications and mass media messages. At a glance, there is no way to distinguish between a personal opinion, information conveyed from somewhere else, or in some cases, who the person sharing this information even is. These frameworks expose the shortcomings of existing media literacy frameworks in understanding our current media landscape.
People are not explicitly taught methods of interpreting social media content, it is entirely up to the user to interpret and internalize this information. Adults who grew up before social media were able to form their daily habits and social skills without this added complicating factor. Children today do not know a world without ubiquitous social media use, and they are still not taught how to use social media responsibly. Without a clear educational framework for how to use social media, digital natives are being set loose into an online world that does little to provide the context and developmental guidelines needed to succeed. With social media literacy, these developmental issues can begin to be addressed.
About the Author
Joe Hageman is a curriculum developer at KindEd, a copy editor, a part-time literacy instructor, and a graduate student in the Master of Arts in the Humanities Program at the University of Chicago. Joe is interested in studying the ways that our reception of media has changed in the era of social media. He studied English and History at New York University. Outside of KindEd and his studies, you can find Joe running away from his problems along Lake Michigan or grinding up his rating on Chess.com.