Journal of Adolescent Health
Volume 39, Issue 4 , Pages 459-460, October 2006

Media Literacy Has Potential to Improve Adolescents’ Health

James L. Knight Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Article Outline

 

Media literacy is a relatively new approach to helping young people make good decisions about their health. My favorite simple definition of media literacy is that we’re teaching adolescents how to read “Baywatch” as well as “Beowulf.” Basically, it’s the idea that the popular media (television, movies, music, teen magazines, the Internet) in which adolescents are immersed are probably as important as the classics in teaching cultural norms and expectations. Decades of research has shown that the media do affect adolescents’ aggressive and sexual behavior, body satisfaction and eating disorders, as well as alcohol use and cigarette smoking [1]. I and other media-effects researchers have found that the media can serve as a kind of super peer for young people, glamorizing and normalizing often unhealthy behavior [2].

When applied to health, media literacy means helping young people see that the media are in the business of selling them products and behaviors that often are not good for them. By increasing awareness of how media are produced and packaged, the assumption is that adolescents will become more critical of what they see and hear and will be less likely to engage in the unhealthy behavior promoted in the media.

We might think a more effective strategy would be to change the media rather than the media’s consumers. But affecting media content is an especially difficult proposition with such a commercially driven and government-independent media industry. Health advocates have had only limited success in getting the media to provide healthier content or to reduce unhealthy fare. The elimination of cigarette advertising from radio and television in the 1970s was a remarkable achievement, but that important step has been undermined as tobacco has reemerged in other kinds of media. Currently, about one in five of the episodes of popular, noneducational prime time television programs depict tobacco use [3], and prosmoking portrayals outnumber antismoking portrayals by a ratio of ten to one [4]. Almost all of the top-rated movies for children, teens, and adults contain some portrayal of smoking that usually conveys physical attractiveness and high social status [5], [6]. Recent research has shown that teens who see more movies that depict smoking are more likely to begin smoking [7], [8].

We certainly shouldn’t give up trying to persuade the media to provide healthier content for young audiences. Given the barriers to significant changes in content, however, it seems prudent to look for other ways to reduce the potentially harmful effects of the media on adolescents’ health. Media literacy is a potentially fruitful strategy.

Although media literacy education has been practiced in other countries—such as Canada, Great Britain, and Australia—for three decades or more, it is just now gaining a foothold in the United States. The movement has spawned two national organizations that advance media education training, networking, and information exchange through professional conferences and media list-serves: Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) and Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME).

The media literacy movement in the United States has been hampered, however, by a lack of rigorous evaluations of the various media literacy interventions underway [9]. Only a few previous studies have established that media literacy training increases critical thinking about the media and/or affects attitudes about a health issue (e.g., alcohol and tobacco use, body image, and violence) [10], [11], [12], [13].

The study reported in this issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health uses an elegant measure that reliably assesses the three media domains that most practitioners and researchers agree are fundamental in media literacy education: (1) authors and audiences, (2) messages and meanings, and (3) reality and representation [14]. The evidence presented by Primack and his colleagues shows that increases of only one point on the Smoking Media Literacy Scale were significantly related to reduced current smoking and reduced susceptibility to future smoking. This is quite remarkable. It suggests that knowing even a bit about the media’s intentions and effects could improve adolescents’ health.

Even if we do accumulate more such evidence that media literacy makes a difference in adolescents’ health-related decisions, establishing media literacy as an important component of a young person’s education will not be easy. We need more research not only showing, as this study does, that media literacy is related to health outcomes, but also to develop effective curricula that can be easily adopted in multiple venues. It is not clear at this point how much media education is necessary, when it should start, how long it should last, or what components are most important. Most existing media education curricula require multiple meetings and focus on only one medium (usually television and/or advertising) or only one health issue at a time.

One recent study, however, has shown that even one media literacy training session can increase early adolescents’ skepticism toward advertising, and that taking a more emotional rather than only fact-based approach may be most effective with middle-schoolers [15]. This is good news, certainly, for school systems that have been reluctant to install full-blown media literacy components in their already over-burdened curricula. All 50 states now have at least one element of media literacy as part of their curricular requirements. Most incorporate media literacy in major subject areas such as English or social studies and some in health [16], but adoption has been sporadic and inconsistent at best [17].

In 1997 the American Academy of Pediatrics launched a national “Media Matters” media education campaign designed to educate its members and provide clinical tools to assess and mitigate media effects on children and adolescents. The kit included a “Media History” form that pediatricians were encouraged to have parents fill out to assess their children’s patterns of media use. Apparently, only a few pediatricians used the form because they found it too time-consuming. Pediatrician researcher Michael Rich surveyed U.S. pediatric residency programs and found that only about one-third teach about the health effects of media exposure. He concluded that “developing a pediatric media curriculum and training pediatric residency directors or designated faculty may be a resource-effective means of improving health for children growing up in a media-saturated environment” [18]. Such programs could make a difference. Hearing from your child’s doctor that the media matter in your child’s health could be a powerful intervention. More could and should be done to educate pediatricians as well as parents and their children, because the media do matter.

Back to Article Outline

References 

  1. Brown JD, Cantor JR (guest editors). The mass media and adolescents’ health. J Adolesc Health 2000;(27)2(Suppl).
  2. Brown JD , Halpern C , L’Engle K . Mass media as a sexual super peer for early maturing girls . J Adolesc Health . 2005;5(36):420–427
  3. Roberts DF , Christenson PG . “Here’s Looking at You, Kid”: Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco in Entertainment Media . Washington, DC: Kaiser Family Foundation; 2000;
  4. Dozier DM , Lauzen MM , Day CA , et al.   Leaders and elites: portrayals of smoking in popular films . Tob Control . 2005;14(1):7–9
  5. Dalton MA , Tickle JJ , Sargent JD , et al.   The incidence and context of tobacco use in popular movies from 1988 to 1997 . Prev Med . 2002;34:516–523
  6. Everett SA , Schnuth RL , Tribble JL . Tobacco and alcohol use in top-grossing American films . J Community Health . 1998;23(4):317–324
  7. Sargent JD , Beach ML , Adachi-Mejia AM , et al.   Exposure to movie smoking: its relation to smoking initiation among US adolescents . Pediatrics . 2005;116(5):1183–1191
  8. Dalton MA , Sargent JD , Beach ML , et al.   Effect of viewing smoking in movies on adolescent smoking initiation: a cohort study . Lancet . 2003;362:281–285
  9. Kubey R . Obstacles to the development of media education in the United States . J Commun . 1998;58–69 Winter
  10. Robinson TN , Wilde ML , Navracruz LC , et al.   Effects of reducing children’s television and video game use on aggressive behavior: a randomized controlled trial . Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med . 2001;155(1):17–23
  11. Moore J , DeChillo N , Nicholson B , et al.   Flashpoint: an innovative media literacy intervention for high-risk adolescents . Juv Fam Court J . 2000;23–33 (Spring)
  12. Piran N , Levine M , Irving L . GO GIRLS! Media literacy, activism, and advocacy project . Healthy Weight J . 2000;89–90 (Nov/Dec)
  13. Austin EA , Johnson K . Effects of general and alcohol-specific media literacy training on children’s decision making about alcohol . J Health Commun . 1997;2:17–42
  14. Primack BA , Gold MA , Land SR , et al.   Association of cigarette smoking and media literacy about smoking among adolescents . J Adolesc Health . 2006;4(39):465–472
  15. Austin EA , Chen Y-C , Pinkleton BE , Johnson JQ . Benefits and costs of Channel One in a middle school setting and the role of media-literacy training . Pediatrics . 2006;117:423–433
  16. Kubey R , Baker F . Has media literacy found a curricular foothold? . Educ Week . 1999; (Oct. 27)
  17. Hobbs R , Frost R . Instructional practices in media literacy and their impact on students’ learning . N J J Comm . 1999;2:123–148
  18. Rich M , Bar-on M . Child health in the information age: media education of pediatricians . Pediatrics . 2001;107(1):156–162

PII: S1054-139X(06)00277-1

doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2006.07.014

Journal of Adolescent Health
Volume 39, Issue 4 , Pages 459-460, October 2006

Article Tools