About Media Literacy

Media literacy helps youth make better decisions.

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In recent years, adolescents have become an increasingly important target for advertising, as teens are estimated to spend more than $155 billion, averaging $84 per week of their own and their parents’ money. There is significant research evidence that shows that advertising influences young people’s tendency to use alcohol and lowers their sense of self esteem and body image. Many critics, parents, and community leaders have lamented the negative influence of advertising and the culture of celebrity on young people. As one scholar has written, “Constantly encouraged to scan the airways and their peer groups for information about what’s hip and important, children are alienated from their own internal compass, their own sense of creativity and judgment. Not only are their choices of gear limited to whatever is deemed cool for the moment, but their choices of ‘ways to be’ in the world are limited to the superficial, stereotyped, commercial images that are provided by the media.”

Media literacy, defined generally as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms, emphasizes the skills of analyzing, evaluating, and creating media and technology messages which make use of language, moving images, music, sound effects, and other techniques. Drawing upon a tradition underway in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia for the past 20 years, a coalition of U.S. educators have formed a national association and held bi-annual conferences bringing K–12 educators together with academics and community activist.

In the United States, there has been increased momentum to include media literacy skills within state curriculum frameworks. Secondary English language arts textbooks now generally include the formal study of advertising, news, and some film and television genres. More than 40 states including Massachusetts, North Carolina, and New Mexico have identified media literacy skills within language arts, social studies, fine and performing arts, library information skills, or health education curricula. The State of Pennsylvania includes media literacy standards in Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening, Health, Safety and Physical Education, and the Arts and Humanities.

Media literacy activities often invite students to reflect on and analyze their own media consumption habits; to identify author, purpose, and point of view in films, commercials, television, and radio programs, magazine and newspaper editorials and advertising; to identify the range of production techniques that are used to communicate point of view and shape audience response; to identify and evaluate the quality of media’s representation of the world by examining patterns of representation, stereotyping, emphasis, and omission in print and television news and other media. Other media literacy activities often include media production activities to gain familiarity and experience in using mass media tools for personal expression and communication and for purposes of social and political advocacy.