Media Literacy in the Modern Age
By Randi Steers
Since the second world war, global literacy had been on a steady incline, reaching nearly 90% of the total world population in the early years of the 21st century. Since its peak in the 2010s, however, there has been a rapid decline in a specific type of literacy, which has been a topic of concern for educators, writers, and booksellers alike: media literacy.
With the recent deluge of AI content, the practice of doomscrolling shortform content on smartphones and tablets, and the simplification of educational material aimed at school-aged youth, there seems to be no end of the comorbidities contributing to the decline of media literacy in today's digital age.
Characters are no longer expected to have flaws, and the ones that do get eviscerated in reviews and in online forums where readers gather to discuss literature. There's a growing trend in conflating what's depicted in a story, with what the author personally endorses. If something illegal, problematic, or bigoted is portrayed within the pages of a book, younger readers will often quit reading, downrate, and even call for a boycott of the author of the offending material.
This is an extremely troubling trend away from the metaphorical to the literal. People used to understand the difference between an author presenting something morally questionable with the intention of excusing or glorifying, and depictions that clearly frame terrible behaviours and people in a deservedly negative light. To put it simply, reading or writing about bad people isn't the same as being;a bad person.
On top of everything, the art of subtlety in storytelling is practically dead; television shows are now written with "the other screen" (the viewer's smartphone) in mind. If it's not possible to casually consume a storyline with half of your attention span dedicated to your smartphone, then the executive producers will pressure modern television writers to simplify what's going on, and write the dialogue in such a way that the characters narrate what they're doing as they do it. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Unfortunately, this type of compromised storytelling isn't just limited to Netflix originals; every industry is being affected on a global scale, including the publishing industry. Books are being simplified; the average adult reader is reading at roughly an 8th grade level, and things are only getting worse with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
So, what can be done? The good news is that the fix is relatively simple: put the phone down and seriously engage with the media you consume. Read critically, and choose material that challenges you. The brain, like any other muscle, needs upkeep. Reading passively is fine from time to time, but don't let it become a habit. And if you're finding that newer material simply isn't cutting it for you anymore, that's where we secondhand bookstores come in; there's no shortage of well-written material spanning hundreds of years of human creativity. Reading, as always, will save us.
Unfortunately, this type of compromised storytelling isn't just limited to Netflix originals; every industry is being affected on a global scale, including the publishing industry. Books are being simplified; the average adult reader is reading at roughly an 8th grade level, and things are only getting worse with Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
So, what can be done? The good news is that the fix is relatively simple: put the phone down and seriously engage with the media you consume. Read critically, and choose material that challenges you. The brain, like any other muscle, needs upkeep. Reading passively is fine from time to time, but don't let it become a habit. And if you're finding that newer material simply isn't cutting it for you anymore, that's where we secondhand bookstores come in; there's no shortage of well-written material spanning hundreds of years of human creativity. Reading, as always, will save us.
