Media Literacy and Socialization Agents’ Role During Adolescence and Early Adulthood

• In Event: It’s All About the Process: Media Literacy in Digital Age: Motives – Mediation – Measurement

Abstract

The acquisition of media literacy evolves in all socialization agents like parents, peers and teachers. During the adolescences’ life span (and developmental tasks), the socialization agents’ influence differs. This contribution analyzes how age, gender, own and parents’ education influence adolescents’ media literacy and the perceived importance of the agents. To answer our research questions we conducted an online survey among twelve to 26 year old Germans (N=1302). The results show that age, gender and education do influence the degree of media literacy, whereas parents’ education does not have an effect. What skills adolescents have learned from the different agents and how media literate they estimate themselves in comparison to those agents is partly influenced by socio-economic factors, e.g. adolescents with lower educated parents attach more importance to school and less importance to their parents than other youth.

Authors

• Nayla Fawzi, U of Munich

• Claudia Riesmeyer, LMU Munich