Understanding Media

Getting Smart About Media and Its Impacts

Media messages can be very effective in changing young people’s attitudes about drug use. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has been effective in helping young people resist the pressures that young people experience about drug use. Forty percent of teens said that anti-drug TV and print ads make them less likely to try or use drugs. The ONDCP has been active in helping parents, teachers, and other caring adults to learn skills that help protect children and teens.

Teaching about advertising can be one of those skills that help protect young people from media’s negative influence; it fits very effectively into the context of health education and also links to skill development in language arts, social studies, journalism, and the visual arts. Given the pervasiveness of so many different communication technologies in our culture, young people need more opportunities (not fewer) to learn about and discuss the complex functions of the mass media in our lives.

Media literacy skills are basic, 21st century literacy skills that all Americans need today. Here’s why:

  • Media literacy skills help students distinguish between fact and opinion, to recognize claims backed up by evidence and those that use emotions.
     
  • Media literacy skills help students recognize how and why messages appeal to us, sharpening our awareness of the unstated but implied messages that are behind the statements we read, see, or hear in the media.
     
  • Media literacy skills increase students’ ability to choose messages effectively, to evaluate the quality and accuracy of what we watch, see, and read. With more choices available via the Internet, cable, and print media, the ability to select messages wisely is a key literacy skill for the 21st century.