In January 2023, New Jersey pushed back against the tide of misinformation by becoming the first state to pass a law requiring all K-12 students to receive instruction on how information is created and distributed on the Internet and other media. It calls for students to be taught the difference between facts, points of view, and opinions; learn how to access peer-reviewed print and digital library resources; and explore the economic, legal, social, and ethical issues surrounding the use of information.
“Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation that is eroding the role of truth in our political and civic discourse,” said New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, upon signing the law. “It is our responsibility to ensure our nation’s future leaders are equipped with the tools necessary to identify fact from fiction. I am proud to sign legislation that is critical to the success of New Jersey’s students and essential to the preservation of our democracy.”
The law calls for new standards to be prepared by a committee of teachers, certified school library media specialists, and other experts, and it provides opportunities for “public input prior to their adoption by the State Board of Education.”
In an age in which misinformation (things that are incorrect) and disinformation (deliberate efforts to deceive) run rampant, the need for media literacy has never been greater. Simply put, many of the messages being generated for public consumption are wrong, and the public often lacks the skill set to discern this.
But now that may be changing. Erin McNeill, founder and chief executive officer of Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit advocacy organization that works with grassroots groups, says media literacy movements are gaining national traction as policymakers are becoming alarmed by the impact of social media on the mental health of children and adolescents.
Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the American Psychological Association issued advisories about the effects of social media use on the mental health of young people. Murthy’s advisory called for “urgent action by policymakers, technology companies, researchers, families, and young people alike to gain a better understanding of the full impact of social media use, maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of social media platforms, and create safer, healthier online environments to protect children.”
Sharon Johnson
According to Media Literacy Now’s latest annual report, “legislatures in more than half the states have held hearings or votes on media literacy education in committees or debates on the floor of statehouses.” Nineteen state legislatures have taken action since 2009, including blue states like Massachusetts as well as red ones like Utah (see sidebar). In 2023 alone, besides New Jersey, four states passed new laws, including California, home to the nation’s largest K-12 population, which the report says “passed a comprehensive media literacy law that will redirect priorities and funding to media literacy curriculum and professional development.”
McNeill is encouraged by these developments. “Ideally, all school districts should incorporate media literacy instruction in all subjects at all grade levels,” she tells The Progressive. “But different states have focused on different aspects, such as standards for overall curriculum, specific courses, civics, or social media. Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia have approved requirements for teacher credentialing or training.” McNeill adds: “In most cases, bills have received bipartisan support because legislators like those in New Jersey recognize that media literacy teaches young people how to think, not what to think.”
In fact, in New Jersey, Michael Testa, the Republican state senator who was a lead sponsor of that state’s law, pointedly took issue with those who alleged that the new law is somehow an attempt to indoctrinate students into particular ways of thinking. As he put it, “By teaching kids to not blindly trust the information they receive through the news, social media, and other sources and giving them the tools to be skeptical, questioning, independent thinkers, we make it harder for them to be indoctrinated by anyone.”
While some states are passing new laws, others are beefing up existing ones.
Last year, Connecticut and New Mexico passed laws that built on previous efforts. In 2021, Connecticut required the state Department of Education to develop a model curriculum for grades K-8, which could be used by local school boards. In 2023, the state additionally required media literacy in social studies courses. New Mexico, which has permitted media literacy to be offered as an elective to fulfill high school graduation requirements since 2009, passed a measure requiring professional development in media education for teachers.
In Florida, where battles have raged for years over the teaching of race and gender in schools, the state passed a new law in 2023 that emphasized digital wellness, by mandating instruction on the negative effects of social media on mental health. Signed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a so-called warrior in the battle against “woke” education, it requires students in grades six to twelve to learn how social media manipulates and distributes misinformation, as well as how to maintain personal security and identify cyberbullying, predatory behavior, and human trafficking on the Internet. Last March, DeSantis again targeted social media by signing a bill that requires parental consent for children under sixteen to have social media accounts and requires age verification for many websites.
Critics of the laws, including Lee Ohanian, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative research center at Stanford University, have focused on whether the states should add media literacy requirements to the curriculum. Ohanian expressed his concern in an essay on the center’s website.
“The fact that lawmakers create new pet requirements, including ‘fake news’ classes, is an affront to the millions of California families whose children attend deficient public schools, children who will become adults without the skills to afford to live in the state, much less succeed in any career requiring mastery of the basics that our schools should be teaching,” Ohanian wrote.
Such resistance makes passing policies and laws to improve media literacy difficult, as advocates in Illinois learned.
Passing a law to require a “unit” on media literacy for the two million public high school students in Illinois was “no small feat,” says Michael A. Spikes, co-founder of the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition, a group of teachers and scholars who are dedicated to advancing media literacy.
The law delegated decisions about how and what to teach to local districts, which meant that the policy was open to wide interpretation. To solve the problem, the coalition developed a framework that could be used in subjects ranging from science to civics to art and physical education.
“The teachers were already stretched, so they appreciated having materials they could incorporate into existing lesson plans,” explains Spikes, who has taught media literacy at Northwestern University and other colleges for fifteen years. “The framework focuses on developing students’ skills to navigate media, alleviating teachers’ concerns that they might be accused of political partisanship by people in the community who objected to the use of news reports and other materials in the classroom.”
In addition to providing guidance to local districts and training teachers, the coalition partnered with libraries, universities, and museums. “Networking was extremely important because the mandate was unfunded and depended on volunteers for implementation, which was unsustainable,” Spikes says. “Networking enabled us to connect with people who could either move ideas forward on their own or connect with others who could do so to ensure that the objectives of the law were fulfilled.”
National advocates are now coming up with solutions to make implementation easier for the states. To aid science teachers, Media Literacy Now has created a searchable database of lesson plans, videos, and games for K-12 students. A lesson plan for general science students in middle and high school introduces them to the concept of experimenter bias, how it operates, and its effect on the scientific process.
Another lesson plan helps high school students evaluate measles and its alleged effect on immunity to various diseases by asking students to read reports and ask a series of questions about the author and the credibility of the information. A standalone lesson for kindergarten pupils includes prompts and examples that the children can use to explore and think about YouTube algorithms.
“We believe that these materials will go a long way toward developing skills that young people need to evaluate information about dieting, mental health, renewable energy, and other scientific topics,” McNeill says. “The movement will continue to evolve and come up with other solutions that young people need to be media literate in the twenty-first century.”
The Future of Media Literacy
W. James Potter, a professor of communications at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says there is more awareness now of media literacy than ever before.
People in positions of power, including state legislators, are taking the subject more seriously, but they face many challenges in coming up with meaningful legislation because media literacy is so complex, Potter tells The Progressive.
“To be media literate, individuals need to think deeply about their media experience, believe they are in control of media influences, and have a high degree of basic knowledge of media control, industries, and effects,” he says.
Implementation poses many barriers. State regulations for public schools are overloaded, making it difficult to fit media literacy into standards for curriculum design and teacher training. Lesson plans must be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each student.
“Local districts must also devote financial resources to implementation,” Potter warns. “Otherwise, media literacy will begin to be regarded as a utopian ideal and disappear from the public agenda.”
— Sharon Johnson