Media Literacy
“Media literacy means the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with media in all forms by understanding the role of media in society, and building skills of inquiry and self-expression essential to participation and collaboration in a democratic society.” - Connecticut House Bill 6762
Children
It is important to instill media literacy values in children at a young age. Teaching children "real" vs. "make-believe" can be a great way to convey this in a way that's easy for them to understand. Talk to your children about different ways in which online content can be curated. Helping them in establishing their digital identity and what their digital footprint could look like. Introduce them and assist them in navigating different platforms and which is appropriate for what purpose. It is ideal to teach them about online privacy and the best ways to protect their anonymity.
Teen
What does social media mean to them? How do they use different platforms and for what purpose? What do their digital footprint look like? Are they happy the way they represent themselves online?Encouraging privacy to further cement that social media is not the end all be all of one's identity. Teens have more autonomy over their digital identity and their interactions with these platforms. How to have a healthy relationship with social media to ensure that their happiness isn't dependent on the outcome of their accounts would be one of the first conversations to have. Enforcing again that posts are curated and edited in a way to showcase the most idealistic aspect of people's lives. How different algorithms can affect the content that they engage with. This would be a great time to introduce them to different methods to foster media literacy.
Adult
Not all of the adults who use social media platforms have been educated on media literacy. That has been made apparent with the types of content that is being shared by older generations. It is never too late to learn about literacy and analyzing the content that we interact with. These skills are essential for parents and other adults to learn in order to foster these ideologies in children. Double checking sources, and finding multiple credible outlets that may be able to corroborate the information is the first step. We have to ensure that the older generation is not perpetuating dangerous information by sharing content that is not supported by facts. A lot of these posts are created in ways to evoke emotional responses, so learning ways to stop, analyze, and reflect would be helpful in dissuading users to believe the first thing they see as fact.