Children’s Media Literacy: A Critical Skill Amidst COVID-19
Written by Parker Murphy, Research Assistant in Cornell’s Social Media Lab and Information Science Major
93% of homes in the United States with school-aged children have reported some form of distance learning due to COVID-19. It’s no doubt that children are getting more screen time than they did before the pandemic. Not all of this screen time is bad — schools have creatively transformed their curriculums to meet the needs of a distanced-learning school year. However, increased screen time inevitably means children have greater exposure to targeted advertisements shown in web browsers, videos, and games online. With school and recreational activities occurring over an almost exclusively digital format over the past few months, media literacy in young children has become increasingly important.
Media literacy is defined as “…the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication” (for more info, take a look at the parents’ guide to media literacy). Parents play a critical role in helping their children unpack and understand the media they consume on a daily basis. Media and advertising are deeply embedded in online environments children engage in for academic and recreational purposes. It’s estimated that we see 20,000–50,000 advertisements and other marketing materials daily, which can have an especially profound impact upon the impressionable minds of children. Marketers exploit children’s insecurities and often use peer influence on social media to actively convince children they need certain products or brands in order to fit in. From famous children’s celebrities in fast-food commercials to YouTube influencers raving about the new, must-have makeup kit, brands are consistently trying to grab hold of consumers at as young an age as possible. These kinds of tactics can convince children they need to purchase specific brands or products to fit in with their peers. As a result, it’s especially important for parents and guardians to have conversations with their children about how and why advertisers target specific users.
Media literacy in regard to advertising is an especially pertinent topic because today’s children have grown up in a world where technology has played a constant and pervasive role in their everyday lives. The impact of distance learning has amplified these concerns in a way that no parent or educator could have expected. With this “digital leap” online, a huge burden has been placed upon children and their parents to develop skills and knowledge of online resources. Moreover, schools often provide little formal education for children on how to safely navigate their increased exposure to online advertising.
The good news is that research has shown that even short, fifteen-minute educational interventions can improve children’s ability to recognize advertisers’ persuasive tactics. A study conducted by media researchers in 2014 instituted a short instructional intervention that aimed to help improve students’ media literacy skills. The researchers noted that “…between the ages of eight to twelve years, there is a significant shift in the children’s knowledge about the goals and intentions of advertisers” (p. 2), suggesting that children’s understanding of advertisements is largely shaped during this period. The study found that the more experience children had with critically thinking about advertising, the more adept they were at recognizing its persuasive nature. The study concluded that “short interventions can be effective at helping children acquire the skills necessary to be discerning consumers of media” (p. 8). After one week, not only were children able to critically examine media, but were also able to improve their argumentation skills as a result. This finding is especially relevant given the pandemic and the increased amounts of targeted advertising children are being exposed to each day. Even with limited amounts of time, parents can help educate their children about media literacy and substantially impact their children’s understanding of tactics used by advertisers to influence their opinions and perspectives, while simultaneously building their children’s analytic skills.
But where should parents start and how should they begin these conversations? The Social Media Lab’s TestDrive has a specific module which educates students on how advertisers target users online, called “Ads on Social Media.” Even fifteen minutes spent working through this module with your children could help them develop concrete skills to recognize how advertisements stealthily infiltrate many aspects of digital media. Additionally, Common Sense Education has a free digital citizenship curriculum with elementary through middle-school aged content that closely aligns with many of the modules on TestDrive. Even a few minutes working through some of the exercises could help dramatically improve your child’s ability to discern the persuasive tactics advertisers use to influence their perceptions and behaviors.
Parents have an important role to play in educating their children in media literacy. With COVID-19 dramatically increasing the digitization of education, media literacy in children has not received the attention it deserves. Research has shown that even short interventions can have positive impacts on children’s media literacy, so parents shouldn’t feel helpless or discouraged in combating the influx of screen time their children are receiving on a day-to-day basis. Resources like the SML’s Social Media TestDrive modules and Common Sense are great tools for parents, educators, and children to learn about how targeted advertising and other aspects of digital media can influence our perspectives.
