Adolescents and Critical Literacy
In today’s world, adolescents need to be able to use critical literacy in ways that allow them to look at digital media through an analytical lens, and also be able to decide whether they want to accept that information as factual or fictional. Although digital literacy and critical literacy might seem like to separate concepts, they often go hand in hand. When someone describes someone else as being digitally literate, we typically think of them as being able to use a computer, smartphone, or any other technology. Usually this definition is limited to computer skills or technological skills, but what if it is actually much deeper than that. In David Buckingham’s article about digital media literacies, he describes this as being the functional definition of digital literacy. However, in recent years, the idea of internet literacy has changed. Rather than it involving basic computer skills, the idea of digital literacy has evolved to become more about analyzing sources of information and being able to decode those sources of information (Buckingham 2007).
This is where critical literacy can be very useful. In the past, we would primarily use critical literacy in a text-based approach in order to help read and analyze pieces of information that have been printed. However, in order to help teach critical literacy to the adolescents, it’s important that we also discuss critical literacy within the digital spaces of the world (Warner 2017).
This video talks a lot about the importance of critical literacy, and the implications that being critically literate can have on your beliefs or opinions on the world around you. We need to be teaching our adolescents how to use these critical literacy skills to draw attentions to the aspects of a text, or of a digital media source, that seem like the most important (Fuller 2017). Another way to look at different texts, whether they be digital or printed, is to look at who is benefiting by publishing that text or by making that social media post. In addition, we need to teach our youth to be able to analyze and determine WHY the publisher/author is benefiting from that text (Soares 2006).
In most cases, the education system fails to teach young people how to use critical literacy skills. With the emergence of new technologies in schools at an early age, it’s of vital importance that we try and provide adolescents with a basic understanding of how to analyze digital media in today’s world. Whether this be through the requirement of critical literacy classes at a younger age, or through the implication of critical literacy ideas throughout the students’ careers, we need to be cognizant of the effects that teaching these types of skills to students may have.We can help prevent the whole idea that everything you read on the internet is true, while also providing our youth with the basis require for creating their own ideas and analyses of both digital and printed texts. Teaching students about critical literacy early on will give them the mindset that they need in order to be successful throughout their schooling career, and hopefully in their future careers as well.
Required Readings
Buckingham, D. (2007). Digital Media Literacies: Rethinking Media Education in the Age of the Internet. Research in Comparative and International Education,2(1), 43–55. doi:10.2304/rcie.2007.2.1.43
Warner, J. (2017). Critical Digital Literacies. In Adolescents new literacies with and through mobile phones(pp. 143–160). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. doi:https://doi.org/10.3726/b1122
Outside Resources
Fuller, Shirley. (2017, September 19). How to Help Children Understand Critical Literacy When Reading. Retrieved from https://www.learningtoloveliteracy.com/blogs/updates/how-to-help-children-understand-critical-literacy-when-reading
Soares, L., & Watson, P. (2006). Empowering Adolescents through Critical Literacy. Middle School Journal, 37(3), 55–59. doi:10.1080/00940771.2006.11461537
