I went on CNA 938 live radio yesterday to chat with Lance Alexander and Soo Sien Tay about imparting media literacy to young people.
Media literacy is already being taught in our schools to help kids think critically about the content they encounter daily. I think we can go beyond the classroom and embed media literacy into our daily activities.
During the interview (the link is in the comments), I gave an example of how parents teach children how to look left and right before crossing the road. In the same way, parents and children can constantly share with each other (yes, adults need to be media literate too) the latest bits of misinformation going around. That’s what we do in my family – we are always sharing news about the latest scam techniques.
Oh yes, media literacy is not just about avoiding scams. I write posts that get people to think harder about what they read here. For example, I sometimes ask, “Why do people post selfies that have nothing to do with the post?”, “Why do thoughtfully-written posts sink out of sight while inane posts go viral?”, “How does this platform algorithm actually work?”, “What am I doing here?”
And finally, the reason why I can’t paste the content hyperlink in this paragraph is that doing so will get the post deprioritised by the platform algorithm (because the platform does not want you to stop scrolling here). Media literacy also means knowing the rules of the game and explaining the rules to others!