Every week it seems as if there is another anxiety-inducing headline about the damage that digital media are doing to our children. Dire proclamations have become standard fare in corporate media, where revenue is generated by clicks and attracting eyeballs to advertising. After all, we’re much more likely to pay attention to screaming headlines about children’s brains being rewired than we are to a headline explaining that the science is nuanced and effects are dependent on multiple variables.
Hosts and bloggers amplify the headlines with well-intentioned assurances that we can allay our fears by limiting children’s screen exposure. But basing our decisions on this sort of guilt-inducing framing it isn’t what is best for children. Fortunately, allowing alarmists or profiteers to guide our actions isn’t our only choice.
Looking for Real Solutions to Real Problems for Young Children
The challenges that digital media bring into our lives are real. There is certainly much more that media platforms and content providers could do to create healthier media environments for children. We must continue to advocate for those changes.
Beyond that, the most common recommendation is to withhold devices until some arbitrary age. But let’s be very clear. As long as digital media devices are a part of adult lives, those devices are in children’s lives whether they use them or not.
This doesn’t mean we must allow 24/7 access to screens, but it does mean recognizing that no matter what rules we impose, our children are growing up in an environment where digital media are already inextricably integrated into daily life. Even if no young child ever used a media device themselves, we are still left with the challenge of how to help children prepare for healthy, satisfying lives in a digital world.
Drawing from Our Strengths
To find answers to that challenge, why not draw from our strengths instead of our anxieties? What if early childhood professionals began to apply what we already know about quality education to the challenges of digital media? What if we adopted strategies based on our field’s common wisdom:
You can’t just tell children what not to do; they need to know what to do instead.
Imagination, joy, and play are vital to learning.
Face-to-face interactions and conversations with stable, caring adults are essential to healthy development and growing brains.
An approach that incorporates these ideas already exists. We call it media literacy education.
What is Media Literacy Education?
In its most formal incarnation, media literacy education is a multidisciplinary expansion of traditional literacy instruction that teaches students to routinely apply critical inquiry, reading, and reflection skills to all forms of media that they encounter, use, and create.
While this definition may seem more didactic than the open-ended experiences you routinely offer in your early care and education program, media literacy can easily be integrated into your classroom, as you will learn later in this post.
Introducing Core Skills
We start with foundations with young children. Ultimately, we want to instill the habit of asking analytical questions about media messages. Before they are ready, children need to notice the media messages in their environment and become accustomed to having conversations about them.
So, we model and engage, using children’s innate sense of wonder and curiosity to help them build the inquiry skills they need in a world filled with digital media.
Using The Olympics to Refocus Children During this Period of Anxiety, Learn Media Literacy, and Have Fun
The upcoming Olympics provides a great opportunity to envision what this process looks like in action. The Games present children with a world of new and amazing things – sports they’ve never seen before, dramatic stories, models of kindness and perseverance, and so much more. Here a few ways to use its moments to help children practice noticing, asking questions, and talking about media messages in analytical ways that are developmentally appropriate:
1. Use flags, uniforms, and colors to help children learn about symbols.
What colors represent the USA (or your family’s country of origin) and why? Give children an opportunity to make their own “Team USA” t-shirts. Ask what they could include on the shirts to let everyone know that they support their team and their country.
When the Olympic rings pop up, invite children to guess why the Olympics adopted this logo. If no one guesses, ask why they think the rings are interconnected (overlapping, almost like they’re holding hands) and why these specific colors. Then explain that every national flag in the world has at least one color represented in the rings, so the rings represent everyone in the world being connected.
As you move around your community, help children notice other color-related messages: What colors represent your favorite Italian or Mexican restaurant? Why do you think they use those colors? What could we ask the computer to answer our question?
Besides flags, what other colors in our neighborhood send messages (like they’re talking to us), and what are they saying? What do the colors on a traffic light symbolize? How about school uniforms? What other colors do children notice in their community, and what are the messages?
2. Help children notice the diversity of the athletes.
Research shows that children who see themselves reflected in the media they use have a stronger sense of identity, pride, and confidence that makes them better learners. So, ask children if they see anyone who looks like them. Help them notice all the different skin colors, ages, and body types (because even though they’re all in amazing shape, a weight-lifter looks a lot different than a distance runner and a basketball player is likely to be much taller than a gymnast).
Watch the Paralympics together and ask children what they think about all the different abilities and adaptations.
Talk about what it means when an athlete says they are proud to “represent” their country. What does it mean to represent one’s country? Help children notice all the different types of people who “represent” the USA.
Most importantly, help children notice how athletes treat one another with respect, even when they are different and even when they lose. Highlight acts of good sportsmanship. What do people do when they are disappointed? How do they show respect even when they don’t speak the same language? Compare these scenes with other media (or real life events) where people don’t treat each other well and make clear who you think serves as the better role model.
3. Question the ads.
Every time coverage cuts to an ad, or an ad pops up online, teach children to ask, “What does this want me to do or believe? Why would they want me to do that? If I did it, would it make my family proud of me?” Help them notice clues in the ads that would help them answer these questions.
4. Teach children what the phrase “official sponsor” means and make a game of seeing who spots or hears the phrase first when you’re watching the Games.
Explain that “sponsors” are companies that trade money and services (like supplying uniforms or snacks for the athletes) for publicity. Sponsorship announcements are ads for those companies.
Make it clear that sponsorship might be a good thing, but whether the company supports the Olympics or not doesn’t really change their product. For example, if an Olympic sponsor sells barbeque sauce but we prefer ketchup, we might admire their choice to sponsor an Olympic team, but the sponsorship isn’t really relevant to our condiment purchasing decision. And choosing not to purchase a particular brand doesn’t make us more or less patriotic.
5. Model asking the media literacy question: What’s missing that might be important to know?
Olympic athletes make their sports look easy and many little ones will naturally copy what they see on screen. So, before a rambunctious preschooler attempts a back flip off the wall that they are imagining is a balance beam, or tries to fly their tricycle over a set of steps, we can do some prevention.
Help children notice safety measures. This might be pointing out the spotter on a gymnastic high bar routine, the thick mats that help cushion a high jumper’s landing, the life vests that kayakers wear, or the helmets cyclists wear (just like kids who ride bikes!). Even Olympic athletes make sure it is safe before they compete and so should we. And there are lots more safety precautions that the cameras never show us.
Explain that people on TV can do things we’re not allowed to do, just like there are things you’re allowed to do at home that you’re not allowed to do at grandma’s house (or at school, temple, a restaurant, etc.). We don’t copy the things we see on screen unless there’s an adult present to be our “spotter,” just like Olympic athletes put on the right equipment or wait for their spotters to be in place before they start their routines.
While you’re watching, ask, “What’s missing?” Then explain that we get to see the final result but what’s missing is all the preparation and practice the athletes did before this competition. The diver didn’t start out doing a triple twist flip the first time they jumped off a diving board! For a child’s favorite athlete or sport you may want to find a video backgrounder that talks about the athlete’s training. Once children understand, ask the question and let them answer.
6. Create media together.
After every competition there are interviews. Ask children what they would ask the athletes? If appropriate, perhaps you could find an athlete on social media and help children post their questions. You may even want to video their questions. Then monitor for answers.
Or, when you play sports together, trade off doing “play-by-play,” describing a child’s speed, or kick, or how their hard work learning how to jump has really paid off and let them describe you or each other (all tongue in cheek and good fun, of course). This will help them pay attention to the role of announcers in crafting the drama of the moment.
To deepen their understanding of the role of narrator, try watching a race or game with the sound off for a few minutes. Have children contrast that experience with the experience of listening to sportscasters call the event.
7. Teach research skills.
Does someone want to know more about a sport or athlete? Practice the habit of identifying your voice assistant as a computer: “Let’s ask the computer. Siri, …..?” Adding that half phrase helps children understand that they are talking to a machine, not a person (sort of like a vending machine for answers to questions, except it doesn’t show us all the choices; it just gives the answer it selects).
As children’s media literacy skills develop, you might wonder aloud if a different voice assistant or different computer would give the same answer. Eventually, you can show them a computer search on a screen so they see that multiple responses are listed. Explain how we select the one we think is the best choice. What makes it the best choice?
When we ground our actions in education rather than our own fears and anxieties about media effects, helping children develop habits of inquiry isn’t about scolding or monitoring minutes or somehow trying to convince them not to like what they like. Media literacy education is fun because learning is fun!
About Faith Rogow, Ph.D.
Faith Rogow, PhD, is an independent scholar and longtime media literacy education advocate and innovator. She has written or coauthored a number of books and articles, most recently Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates (NAEYC 2022). She also occasionally blogs as the Media Literacy Education Maven at TUNE IN, Next Time.
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For more ideas about ways to integrate media literacy inquiry into everyday routines at home and in formal educational settings, read .
