Why media literacy?
Since our founding, the core policy focus in the UK has shifted away from empowering children and parents with the skills they need to stay safe online, and towards regulation of online platforms. While online safety regulation is absolutely essential, and an important area of progress in terms of creating a level playing field for children online, it will not eliminate all risks and harm. As things stand, too many children and parents lack the skills and knowledge they need to be resilient in the face of a fast-evolving online world.
With political attention having centred on the long passage of the Online Safety Act in recent years, the media literacy agenda has been somewhat neglected in comparison, lacking the same scale of ambition. The stated aim of the Online Safety Act is to make the UK the safest place to be online, but this goal will not be achieved without a much more expansive media literacy offer.ii That is not to say there has been no work in this space – far from it. There has been much excellent work across the sector, guided in recent years by media literacy strategies from both the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Ofcom in 2021. Yet much of this work is piecemeal, time-bound and under-resourced. The result is that media literacy among families remains stubbornly poor.