How Should Adolescents Critically Use Digital Media in the 21st Century

As digital media continues to grow more prevalent in our daily lives adolescents are finding more and more ways to interact with it. They use social media sites multiple times a day and rely on digital media to interact with their friends and the world around them. The more adolescent usage of digital media increases, the need for them to be taught how to critically use the media increases. Adolescents critically interacting with digital media would involve them knowing how to protect themselves, being able to correctly identify the spaces they enter, and understanding how to properly communicate their ideas within the digital communities.

In order to decide how adolescents should critically use digital media we must first define what a student with critical literature skills looks like. On her website designed to expand knowledge on critical literacy, Rachel Forster defines what this type of student would be able to do, “Becoming critically literate means that students have developed and mastered the ability to read, analyze, critique, and question the messages inherently present within any form of text.” (Forster). A student with the described skill set would be able to thrive within the world of digital media. Being able to read and analyze text in depth would lead to them creating meaningful responses in various forms, leading to a positive interaction between them, the media, and others who interact with the media.

However, being able to interact meaningfully with media and other people does not make up all the requirements for how students should critically interact with digital media. In our required reading Julie Warner states, “Not only should critical digital literacy teach youths to interrogate the texts they read and circulate, it should also involve teaching youth how to read digital spaces” (Warner, 154, 2017). There is a large number of adolescents who are not capable of fully understanding the digital spaces they enter. This could lead to them being attacked, hacked, or left in general confusion due to them being unable to understand what they are interacting with. If students can use their critical literary skills to understand the spaces they enter they are less at risk online.

Not only does critical literacy allow adolescents to better judge the spaces they enter, it also allows them to know when they are being targeted by advertisements. Companies are using digital media in order to market their products to targeted audiences. As the video below explains adolescents should be able to use critical literacy to navigate the digital world and avoid unwanted advertisements.

Being aware of the advertisers and their targeting strategies helps adolescents to not fall into the traps many of these big companies try to snare them into.

The final way adolescents should critically interact with digital media is being able to make decisions on technologies impact on both society and culture. Buckingham explains this in the article we read for class, “Hyperreaders will compare different information sources; assess how the authority of the sites is claimed and established; analyse who produced the site, and why they did so; and consider what might be absent, and why.” (Buckingham, 47, 2007). There are many instances where adolescents are able to understand the digital space they are in but do not fully understand the entirety of what they are reading or interacting with. Critical literary skills allow them do study the content in depth and understand why it was created, who it was created for, and what goals it was meant to achieve. Adolescents should be able to do this kind of critical work in order to get the most out of digital media.

Teaching adolescents critical literary skills in terms of digital media is an important task for today’s schools. Without these skills adolescents will not be able to fully understand the spaces in which they enter or the content they interact with. They should be able to understand the spaces and content deeply while also knowing why these entities were created and who created them. Additionally they should be able to avoid trap advertisements and hacks that would put them at risk in multiple ways. A 21st century adolescent should have the critical literacy skills necessary to achieve the full potential of the digital media they interact with on a day to day basis.

Works Cited Page

Required Readings:

Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents new literacies with and through mobile phones. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

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

Outside Readings:

Forstat, Rachel. “Critical Literacy in the 21st Century.” Critical Literacy in the 21st Century — Home, thinkcritically.weebly.com/.

E. (2013, April 05). Media Literacy Concepts and Metaphors: Critical Thinking. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYKnfuFZ1pA