6
Training and Education
As this report shows, social media has the potential to both harm and benefit young users. Some of the harms can be mitigated and the benefits realized through reliance on product design features as set out in the previous chapter. But there will always be a role for individual choice in managing the risks of the online world. The opacity of the algorithmic processes that drive social media, combined with the appeal of the products and the stickiness of their design, can make the relative importance of user choices seem insignificant. There is, nevertheless, an important role for education in enabling people to identify and break self-destructive habits, to be more sophisticated consumers of social media, and more discerning in what they authorize technology companies to do with their data.
There is evidence to suggest that ignorance of how online media work is a serious problem. A recent nationally representative survey assessing adults’ knowledge of digital media found that 77 percent of respondents failed the test and 92 percent scored a D or lower (Turow et al., 2023). Answers to questions evaluating knowledge of the legal protections of user data indicated surprisingly high knowledge gaps. Three out of every four respondents incorrectly answered the true-false question, “The U.S. federal government requires that companies ask Internet users to opt-in to being tracked” (it does not); 82 percent either incorrectly affirmed or did not know if the statement “The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents apps that provide information about health from selling data collected about app users to marketers” were true or
false (it is false) (Turow et al., 2023). Perhaps more telling from the survey was a sense of fatalism. Although only 14 percent of respondents trusted companies’ motives in using their personal data and 91 percent would want control over that information, 79 percent agreed with the statement, “I have come to believe that I have little control over what marketers can learn about me online” (Turow et al., 2023). Less can be said about what children and adolescents understand about how to effectively manage the online world, and social media in particular (Livingstone, 2014). Evidence from the UK, for example, indicates that a sizable minority of young people are overconfident in their abilities to correctly identify misinformation. Of the three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds surveyed who indicated that they could distinguish between real and fake online profiles, about a quarter failed to do so accurately in a test (Ofcom, 2023). Nor is it clear that young people have a good understanding of how to maintain privacy online even as there is growing public emphasis on protecting their private information, such as the California age-appropriate design law, for example (Andrews et al., 2023).
Given the role digital media has to shape society (i.e., influencing politics, health, culture, and self-expression), there is an urgent need for more explicit attention to digital media competency in the school system. Schools have already played a role in influencing young people to use electronic devices and social media. Especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of YouTube, Google Classroom, and other digital learning tools (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology) has grown; many teachers also use educational games (e.g., Prodigy, Animal Crossing), online blogs, and social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram) for instruction (Askari et al., 2018; Kurtz, 2020). The reliance on technology in schools can lead to a situation where children are exposed to social media platforms at an early age, even if their parents may prefer a more limited and controlled digital environment.
Interactions between teachers and students that may have happened in person are increasingly occurring through social media, and children may use the platforms to communicate with their classmates as well (Ong and Quek, 2023). Teachers may be reluctant to use social media in the classroom because of its distracting potential, but a 2020 review described it as “somewhat ubiquitous” in K through 12 classrooms (Dennen et al., 2020). In short, schools and teachers play a pivotal role in the initial exposure of children to social media. As devices and social media become entrenched in the school curriculum, parents necessarily cede some control of their children’s online presence.
This chapter recommends educational strategies that aim to improve the online experience for adolescents as well as the contextual understanding of their teachers and health providers.
COMPREHENSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION
The absence of a clear understanding of how digital media work and the effects they can have will continue to limit consumers from using social media in the safest and most beneficial ways possible. The unique vulnerability of young people to toxic content or misinformation is clear, but, in the committee’s assessment, setting up additional age bars and time restrictions to online access is neither practical nor entirely desirable. It is therefore necessary both to create an online environment that protects young people and social media consumers who are empowered to protect themselves. In the same way that improving health literacy can provoke healthier life choices, so can improving media literacy enable better choices online (McAnally and Hagger, 2023).
Failure to invest in young people’s ability to navigate the complex world of online news and media has consequences for the young people themselves and for society at large (Cho et al., 2022; Crosling et al., 2022; Jones-Jang et al., 2021). Shortfalls in media literacy contribute to social problems and the circulation of misinformation; it can also give young people skewed perceptions of online risks. Some evidence indicates that education can counter this effect (Guess et al., 2020). Media literacy training in schools has been shown to decrease body dissatisfaction in adolescents, for example (Kurz et al., 2022; Zuair and Sopory, 2022). Some evidence suggests that drawing adolescents’ attention to privacy controls on social media can prompt them to greater scrutiny of targeted advertising (Zarouali et al., 2018). For reasons such as these, media education is sometimes framed as digital citizenship, recognizing the civic responsibility that compels attention to this topic (Hobbs, 2007; Lenhart et al., 2011).
Although specific conceptions of media literacy or digital citizenship may vary, most discussions of the topic include a common emphasis on the ability to “access, analyze, and evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of forms” (Huguet et al., 2019; KFF, 2003). Updated standards for digital media are sorely needed, and a lack of clear curriculum standards for teaching modern media literacy has led to inaction in many school systems (Baker et al., 2021). A 2014 review of the effectiveness of media literacy found that most programs were falling well short of their promise, often because of uneven content or curriculum length, or poorly qualified instructors (McCannon et al., 2014). Further hampering the evolution of the field, there is no standard digital media literacy curriculum in the United States (Andrews et al., 2023).
Recommendation 6-1: The U.S. Department of Education should draw national attention to the importance of comprehensive digital media literacy and state boards of education should set standards for the same in grades K through 12.
The committee recognizes that a challenge to this recommendation is that there is limited empirical evidence on which to build comprehensive digital media literacy programs (Guess et al., 2020; Jones-Jang et al., 2021). That is not to say that there is insufficient evidence that media literacy education is effective. A meta-analysis comparing the effectiveness of 51 media literacy programs found that the media literacy improved on students’ knowledge of media by more than 1 standard deviation (d = 1.12, 95 percent confidence interval 0.77 to 1.47); the programs’ association with a reduction in unhealthy behavior was understandably less, but still meaningful (d = 0.23, 95 percent confidence interval 0.15 to 0.31) (Jeong et al., 2012). A more recent meta-analysis of randomized interventions found media literacy to be a modestly effective counter even to body dissatisfaction, a problem with an extensive social and psychological roots (Kurz et al., 2022).
At the same time, published literature offers fewer specifics on the content of an ideal media literacy curricula, possibly because the field changes so rapidly (Huguet et al., 2019). Few studies have been conducted in a manner that would allow for isolating the effects of interventions or establishing a causal relationship between education and behavior change (Huguet et al., 2019).
These are not, however, valid reasons for schools to avoid providing students with the tools they need to navigate their digital lives, especially when the school uses digital platforms and gives digital assignments. There are ample resources that the Department of Education and state authorities could build on in encouraging digital media literacy: Canada and England have content standards and validated methods to assess media literacy in schools (Nkana, 2010). The sources noted in Box 6-1 would form a valuable starting point in this discussion. While the cited sources vary in their scope (some are designed to combat misinformation, others emphasize the skills needed to consume media, or on the potential effects of media), all could be used to inform the comprehensive standard envisioned.
The main goal of education in digital citizenship is to give young people the tools they need to evaluate the relative risks and benefits of their online experience and use online tools responsibly. But the most successful educational programs are set up to include parents and guardians, an inclusion that is all the more important when the curriculum emphasizes practical life skills. Complementary parent education materials would therefore be an important component of the program developed.
The National Association of State Boards of Education recognizes the importance of parental involvement and encourages state boards to implement policies to engage parents (Slone, 2021). There is also precedent for developing companion materials for parents on life-skills programs. For
example, the Department of Education and state authorities in Maryland and California have resources for parents as part of their financial literacy curricula (CDE, 2022; Salmon, 2017; Y4Y, n.d.). The committee recognizes that not all parents will be able or inclined to take part in training but envisions a similar effort where information is at least made available to parents as part of the recommended program on digital media literacy.
The involvement of parents in digital media education programming can help broaden the public discussion of this important topic. Ultimately the education envisioned in this recommendation will help build a more sophisticated society able to understand the systemic effects of digital platforms on politics, culture, and social dynamics. It is the committee’s hope that digital media literacy can be an entry point for school systems to develop the teaching of computational thinking and skills such as data visualization broadly applied to any number of questions (K12 Computer Science, 2023). In this way, the education envisioned could have transformative effects across society.
The development and rollout of a digital media literacy curriculum standard would also be a valuable opportunity to remedy the relatively limited information on the ability of media literacy education to change behavior (Huguet et al., 2019). For example, an analysis of media literacy education in Europe questioned if the subject would be better treated through integrating it across the curriculum, or if that would lead to neglect on the logic that every teacher’s responsibility might as well be no one’s (McDougall et al., 2018). Such questions could be answered if the proposed educational standards were rolled out in a way to allow for rigorous evaluation of both the content of curriculum and the way it is taught. These evaluations would inform an iterative process of revising and updating the educational standards and could eventually facilitate consensus on outcome measures of proficiency. This process would gradually contribute to a better understanding of the most effective strategy.
INTEGRATING DIGITAL MEDIA COMPETENCY INTO PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
The committee recognizes that the media literacy education proposed will be most successful if teachers have a good understanding of the complicated reality of how social media work. Given that U.S. teachers1 are a subset of U.S. adults, whose digital media knowledge has been recently shown to be poor, it seems likely that few would be approaching the topic from an informed position (Turow et al., 2023). For the teaching of digital
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1 Referring here to primary and secondary school teachers.
media literacy to be effective, teachers will need training on the content of the new curriculum and some guidance on the best way to implement it.
Most of the roles teachers have historically played in children’s education offline have now been extended to include parallels in the digital world. Before the advent of communication technologies, students learned how to find, evaluate, and use information from teachers and librarians. Similarly, teachers had always played a role in helping students build healthy peer relationships. Teachers are essential in deterring negative social interactions like school violence, harassment, and school bullying (Eliot et al., 2010).
Nowadays, with the ubiquity of communication technologies and social media, the role of teachers has inevitably expanded to the online world. Teachers are critical players in fostering digital literacy among their students, especially in teaching them how to use technology safely and responsibly, critically evaluate online information, and create and share digital content, all essential skills for 21st-century citizens (OECD, 2019). Current learning and socializing tools have a range of alternate uses, and thus, teachers play a role in educating students about the dangers and opportunities that those alternate uses can bring. Therefore, the first important part of the teacher’s role in the digital education ecosystem is selecting and using the appropriate technologies. Teachers need to be familiar with a variety of technologies and be able to choose the right tools for the job (Voogt et al., 2013).
Teachers also need to be able to use technology effectively in their teaching and help their students develop a critical eye for online information and learn how to evaluate the credibility and suitability of online content (Hämäläinen et al., 2021; Paniagua and Istance, 2018). Teachers are vital in fostering positive social interactions online and deterring negative ones. They can educate children in the respectful and responsible way of using social media and teach students about the appropriate levels of sharing in a public forum. Similarly, they are crucial in preventing cyberbullying and the other forms of harassment by protecting victims and teaching students how to deal with those situations (Guarini et al., 2019).
Most schools must give students opportunities to practice their digital skills, and teachers can provide the guardrails to make those initial interactions in the digital world safe and enriching (OECD, 2019). Teachers need to support and foster digital education within their schools and communities. Together with parents, teachers are guides in the complex, heterogeneous, and ever-changing digital world that children need to navigate. As such, sustainable success in building digital literacy lies in teachers’ flexibility, inventiveness, and responsiveness within their day-to-day interactions with students.
There is some evidence that teenagers take a more favorable view of digital media literacy when their teachers are seen as knowledgeable about the topic, while those who overemphasize the dangers are generally perceived at less credible (De Leyn et al., 2022). It is difficult to say how well teachers can maintain up-to-date knowledge of the subject without more training, however. In the past, teachers responsible for media literacy education have been self-taught or trained through one-off staff development programs or conferences (Hobbs, 2007). There is growing recognition that teacher training and a formal curriculum for digital literacy is needed; at least 18 state legislatures have taken steps to reform media education in schools (McNeill, 2023). There is, nevertheless, inadequate funding to train teachers in the topic, leading the Data & Society Research Institute to describe such training as “primarily a grassroots effort led by impassioned educators” (Bulger and Davison, 2018, p. 5).
The committee commends teachers for bottom-up efforts to empower young people to manage the digital world. But relying on teachers’ initiative can no longer be the main strategy; the material changes too rapidly, and the stakes of misinformation are too high. If students are to absorb digital media literacy they will need to be educated by teachers who are themselves proficient in the topic and who have been trained in how to convey the subject to their students (Simmons et al., 2017). Given the rapid pace of change, teachers also will need continuing education to stay abreast of new technological trends.
Recommendation 6-2: The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation should set requirements for digital media literacy education for student teachers and as part of ongoing professional development for veteran teachers. Teacher training interventions should be designed to allow for rigorous evaluation to measure their effectiveness.
Media literacy as an area of proficiency for teacher training that is neglected, possibly because it is not included in the Common Core Standards, which are in turn reflected in the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) standards (Meehan et al., 2015). Given the competing demands on student teachers’ time, it may not be feasible to add to their training requirements without the formal endorsement of the accreditation organization.
This is not a new problem. There have been pushes to incorporate more technology into classrooms for decades, with little commensurate investment in teacher training. For example, the 1980s saw a tremendous push in the United States to include computers in the classroom, but evidence of their effectiveness relative to traditional teaching tools proved
lackluster (Fouts, 2000). A lack of teacher training and a lack of integration with existing curricula may be partly to blame for this disappointing result.
What is more, media literacy is a constantly changing topic, as media are dynamic as are the most pressing social questions related to media use (Santo, 2013). Questions related to corporate control of online speech, for example, need to be examined from both the one-to-many model familiar to print and broadcast media as well as the participatory many-to-many model of social media (Santo, 2013).
A tertiary meta-analysis found, not surprisingly, that digital literacy training was effective particularly when teachers were well trained to provide it (Archer et al., 2014). Any effort to improve young people’s use of technological tools will depend on their teachers’ ability to integrate these tools into the curriculum. In New Mexico for example, where media literacy education was a high priority in 1990s and 2000s, the state media literacy curriculum was accompanied by a week-long teacher training course emphasizing the need to integrate media education across the curriculum (Nkana, 2010).
Given the competing priorities facing student teachers, CAEP might consider a strategy of promoting media literacy in teacher training by integrating it into other subjects’ coursework. English or reading teachers, for example, could plan lessons around discerning the credibility of online news sources; math lessons might ask students to analyze how different platforms present data, and social studies lessons could review how certain points of view are advanced or ignored on social media (Meehan et al., 2015).
At the same time, integrating media education across the curriculum runs the risk of diffusion of responsibility: If everyone is responsible for teaching the material, it is possible that no one will. For this reason, it could be helpful to have a school district leader responsible for ensuring the goals of the training are met. There are also topics such as embedded marketing, data privacy, and the reputational consequences of oversharing that can be difficult to integrate into curricula (Livingstone and Brake, 2010).
When done properly, digital media education is less about warning students and more about increasing their ability to think critically (Buckingham, 2020). As with other forms of education, critical thinking skills can be cultivated in a way that disproportionately benefits schools and students who are already well off. Teacher quality, school funding, and educational needs are not distributed evenly across the country (Adamson and Darling-Hammond, 2012). Perhaps the biggest challenge this recommendation will pose is the equitable allocation of training resources to teachers in poorly resourced districts.
Better-endowed school districts and schools within those districts have access to time, expertise, staff, and even digital devices to use in education. Further, children in those schools are more likely to enjoy a higher baseline level of support and guidance regarding media consumption, while children at the greatest risk of harm are overrepresented in underfunded school systems. Research on special education programs, for example, suggests that lack of teacher training is a barrier to using technological tools in the classroom, as are students’ access to the internet and devices at home (Starks and Reich, 2023). Research during the COVID19 pandemic found that access to internet connectivity varies widely by state, but between one-quarter to half of students live in homes without the broadband connectivity needed to support distance learning (Chandra et al., 2020). Nationally, more than a quarter of Latino and Latina students, 30 percent of Black students, and 35 percent of Native American students do not have adequate access to internet, nor do an estimated 37 percent of students in rural areas (Chandra et al., 2020). With this basic disparity in access comes a subsequent disparity in skills, wherein in students from disadvantaged groups have fewer opportunities to cultivate advanced digital skills (Reynolds et al., 2022).
To complicate the matter, providing additional media literacy programming and pursuing their own training are additional burdens for teachers (Buckingham, 2020). These burdens will quickly become unreasonable or ignored when they carry an implicit request to stretch existing funds to meet new programming and training goals.
For this reason, both the proposed teacher training and the digital media literacy education in grades K through 12 would be best accompanied by marshalling resources to support the program. The Title I-A program of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides federal aid for the education of disadvantaged students; Title II supports programs for teachers and administrators, including literacy and civics education (CRS, 2022). In recent years, appropriations for Title I-A grants to schools have ranged from $15.5 to $17.5 billion; another $2 billion a year is set aside under Title II-A for supporting instruction with additional, varying amounts of Title II funding available for civics and teacher training (CRS, 2022).
Title I allocates funds according to a formula based on the percentage of low-income students enrolled in a given school (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). It is designed to promote fairness and equity in education by making resources available to schools in historically under-served areas. In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reauthorized the ESEA, allowing state and local education agencies more freedom in tailoring local plans to close “achievement gaps” (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.). The act puts particular emphasis on the importance
of well-rounded education, calling out the importance of, among other subjects, civics, computer science, and technology training (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2023; Jones and Workman, 2016). Such well-rounded education can and should have room for the inclusion of digital media literacy programs.
The Department of Education has a particular interest, articulated in its 2022 Agency Equity Plan, to support states and school districts to make educational opportunities available to all students (U.S. Department of Education, 2022). Through its influence on policy and certain funds the agency exerts a soft power on state educational authorities (Pelsue, 2017). For this reason, the committee envisions cooperation between federal, state, and local authorities as being central to the success of the teaching and teacher training programs recommended.
Programming to Provide Evidence of Best Strategies
As the previous section explained, there is a paucity of large-scale causal evidence on the effectiveness of education to change behavior. Despite an interest in the subject going back years, including a 2010 Aspen Institute call for rigorous program evaluations of both teacher training and student’s retained knowledge, such evaluations are uncommon (Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, 2010). Part of the challenge comes from the relative newness of the field; there is not yet wide agreement on what skills would need to be measured to track digital media literacy (Julien, 2018). There is also considerable variability in educational standards. The IEEE 2020 standard on digital literacy cited 25 different digital skills frameworks, most of them developed by industry, governments, or civil society groups (IEEE, 2021).
The lack of a shared understanding of what digital literacy entails can make it challenging to develop evaluation criteria that are widely accepted and applicable across different initiatives. Because digital literacy interventions can be diverse in their content, providers, and target populations, evaluation of them poses methodological challenges. When the content of an educational intervention is characterized by such heterogeneity, the data collection demands of evaluation are high and can quickly surpass the capacity of the implementing organization. Perhaps for this reason digital literacy interventions are not usually designed with an eye to rigorous impact evaluation, leaving any estimate of the training’s effectiveness subject to confounding.
The push for a national standard for media literacy education and related teacher training programs provides the opportunity to improve the understanding of what makes some programs successful and some failures. The committee therefore seconds recent calls for more prospec-
tive research to identify the essential skills that make up digital media literacy and the most equitable strategy to promote it (Turner et al., 2017). With an evaluation framework in place, it will be easier to identify effective practices and compare the outcomes of different digital literacy initiatives. Interventions at the level of the school district or county can be implemented in a manner that allows for post-hoc evaluations that account for possible confounders. The committee recognizes the considerable front-end effort involved in planning for such evaluations, collecting data from teachers and students, and following them over time. The knowledge generated from these causal evaluations will provide valuable feedback to policy makers and stakeholders and inform an iterative process of curricula improvement. This will also serve an end goal of a more rigorous and evidence-based approach to digital literacy education to ensure that all children and adolescents have the knowledge they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world.
Training for Health Professionals
The recommendations presented so far in this chapter are consistent with an emerging consensus on the importance of media literacy for society, among them a 2016 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraging its members to “advocate for and promote information and training in media literacy” (CCM et al., 2016). The academy further encouraged pediatricians to “promote understanding of the benefits and risks of media” in schools and with their patients and their families, citing risks of internet gaming disorder and problematic internet use both being relatively common (estimates ranging from 4 to 8.5 percent prevalent) among U.S. youth (CCM et al., 2016). A recent American Psychological Association report echoed similar concerns, calling for routine screening for problematic social media use (APA, 2023).
Young people who are struggling with underlying psychological problems may be using social media and gaming to cope (Oldt, 2016). To an adolescent who sees social media as a vehicle for entertainment, connection, or learning (Serra et al., 2021), it would not necessarily be clear that the same pastime that helps them to manage stress is itself a stressor. Published guidance therefore encourages pediatric clinicians to inquire about children’s media use, especially when there are concerns about mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (Gentile et al., 2017).
There is good consensus that pediatricians and other providers should discuss social media use in routine visits and encourage the limiting of electronic media (Hill, 2020). A recognition of the influence of social media on the mental health of young people prompted a recent Surgeon Gen-
eral’s report to recommend routine screening for mental health problems in primary care (OSG, 2021). A similar concern with compulsive use has lead pediatrics organizations in Europe to call for building awareness and support for members to correctly identify problematic use (Ferrara et al., 2017).
There is a difference, however, between what is recommended and what is practiced. In the same way that students in grades kindergarten through 12 need knowledgeable teachers if they are to achieve mastery of digital media, so do patients need providers who are in a position to counsel them on social media use and spot potential warning signs.
Recommendation 6-3: The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, and the Council on Social Work Education should incorporate training on the multiple effects of social media on children’s and adolescents’ well-being into professional education.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) is the accrediting body for medical education in the United States and Canada (LCME, 2023b). The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredit nursing schools (Gaines, 2023). These organizations have a commitment to evolving and dynamic clinical education in an effort to respond to corresponding changes in society (Kirch, 2017). There is also precedent for these organizations making changes in response to social problems. A recognition of deficiencies in nutrition education in medical school caused LCME to create standards for nutrition education, for example (Hark et al., 2015). Over time, this may be a curriculum revision that other accrediting organizations undertake.
The committee recognizes the challenges associated with updating health professional curricula (Gleason et al., 2021). A recent survey found the vast majority (84 percent) of U.S. medical schools were either starting, finishing, or in the midst of a curriculum overhaul (AAMC, 2023). Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that the proposed revision could be integrated into existing guidelines. Standards for curricular content aim to ensure clinicians have sufficient breadth of knowledge to succeed in their residencies. The LCME standards specifically call out “instruction in the diagnosis, prevention, appropriate reporting, and treatment of the medical consequences of common societal problems” (LCME, 2023a, p. 10).
It would be inadequate to treat the symptoms of gaming addiction or signs of problematic social media use without acknowledging the role of social media and the context in which the problems flourish. Even when
clinicians recognize that their patients’ social media use may be related to a condition such as depression, they will need tools to support the unique challenges related to social media use, tools that could help them evaluate their patients’ media habits, for example. It will be important for providers to assess when and how their patients use social media and how this use affects them. To this end, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new National Center of Excellence of Social Media and Mental Wellness will be a helpful resource for those already in practice as well as students (SAMHSA, 2022). One of the center’s main goals is to “build the capacity of individuals who work with children and teens to mitigate harmful impacts of social media on youth mental health and promote healthy social media use” (AAP, 2023). Working with the center might also be an effective way to help providers who already have child and adolescent patients adapt to changing clinical demands (Cass et al., 2020).
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