How should adolescents critically use digital media?
There are a lot of aspects to consider when trying to answer this question. Adolescents have so much to deal with in their lives and the way in which they use digital media is constantly growing in importance. To explore how adolescents should critically use digital media we must first delve into who adolescents are, how they use digital media, and in what ways adolescents are able to be critically literate.
Adolescents or teens are quite different from adults in a lot of ways. Teens are not quite as developed mentally as adults, which means teens have a harder time with decision making and impulse control. While it would be incorrect to say that all adults are better at decision making and impulse control than teens, in general, it is true. Teens, more than adults, are influenced by their peers and are swayed more easily. While these shortcomings make being on the internet dangerous, it helps teens learn and grow from their experiences.
During adolescence, there are two main reasons for using digital media: educationally or socially. When using digital media for educational purposes it’s ingrained in students to use reliable sources. What is sometimes lost on students is what makes a “.edu” site more reliable than Wikipedia. This is where being critically literate comes into play. The ability to discern value and quality of information is having critical literacy. Being critically literate gives students a compass and roadmap to the internet. The struggle of who to trust and what to believe on the internet is a constant struggle that adolescents face every day.
When considering the use of social media the application of critical literacy may not be as clear. For teens, the internet is a place where they have a voice that they may not have had otherwise. This voice, however, can be skewed based on what teens decide to post, retweet, or like. Before something is posted online for the world to see, adolescents should use critical literacy to determine whether that is a good representation of their beliefs. An example of the need for critical literacy on social media is memes. While memes are normally humorous, like the adorable “look at all those chickens”, there are offensive and inappropriate memes out there.
Pepe the Frog is a prime example of memes changing it’s meaning and becoming offensive, as seen in the photo below.
It requires critical literacy to see the difference between funny and offensive memes because they can have the same images or have the same format. To make smart choices about what you post or re-post online, you have to consider your audience and how you are part of an audience too. According to Buckingham (2007),
“Finally, literacy also involves an awareness of one’s own position as an audience (reader or user). This means understanding how media are targeted at audiences, and how different audiences use and respond to them.”
Knowing how and why you are being targeted is a vital part of critically using and curating digital media.
Along with the curator’s role as an audience member and their own audience, teens must also understand what they are saying. The way in which adolescents’ posts convey information about them. This is similar to how advertisement agencies decide what to run, except they are trained on how to make those decisions. Society expects teens to act responsibly online while there is little to no formal education available. As stated by Warner (2017),
“… most young people are not afforded any education around mobile phone-based literacy, including critical digital literacy to help them understand the ways in which the hardware, software, and social practices position them in the world as producers, consumers, or somewhere in between.”
This is particularly upsetting because of the power that adolescents could have if they used the culture they have created online for the good of society. This is explained in a PBS Digital Studios video, the idea that memes could be used to help the world become more unified and merge cultures around the world.
In modern society, there is a rapidly increasing influence in the internet and social media. This integration of life and the internet forces people to be critical of everything around them especially digital media. Teens and adolescents have to make decisions and determine the value of everything around them like no generations before the internet has had to do. Critical literacy and critically using digital media is required for every choice made online by adolescents and adults alike.
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
P. (2012, August 22). Are Memes & Internet Culture Creating a Singularity? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=144&v=eNBOkp346G8
Imgur. (2014, September 11). Look at all those chickens! Retrieved October 19, 2018, from https://imgur.com/gallery/R6QsDRw
McCluskey, M. (2018, March 07). Pepe the Frog Creator Suing InfoWars Over Poster Sales. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from http://time.com/5189646/pepe-the-frog-creator-suing-infowars/
