#402 – News Literacy in America: A Teen Study, with Kim Bowman and Peter Adams

What do teens really think about the news, and how prepared are they to navigate today’s complex information landscape? We explore these questions in this episode of Unpacking Education, as we’re joined by Kim Bowman and Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonpartisan nonprofit. Kim and Peter share the results of their national study, News Literacy in America: A Survey of Teen Information Attitudes, Habits and Skills (2024), with insights from over 1,100 teens. The data reveals both a significant gap in media literacy instruction and a powerful call to action: 94% of teens believe media literacy should be a required part of school.

Our conversation digs into what students are seeing in their feeds—from conspiracy theories to sponsored content—and how well they’re able to distinguish between reliable journalism and misinformation. Kim and Peter break down five key standards for news literacy, discuss how even small doses of instruction can boost trust and civic engagement, and offer actionable strategies to help educators integrate these critical skills across content areas.

Teens want media literacy instruction included in their education. An overwhelming majority of teens (94%) say that schools should be required to teach media literacy.

The News Literacy Project, in their summary of News Literacy in America: A Survey of Teen Information Attitudes, Habits and Skills (2024)

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• Become Information and Media Literate (article collection)
• Information and News Literacy, with Brittney Smith (podcast episode)
• The News Literacy Project, with Brittney Smith (podcast episode)
• Media Literacy, with Dr. Federica Fornaciari (podcast episode)
• A Media Literacy Toolkit for Election Season (article)
• The News Literacy Project (article)

A Critical Skillset

In an age where information moves faster than ever—and often without filters—news literacy is more than a nice-to-have; it’s a critical skillset. Our guests, Kim Bowman and Peter Adams, share their insights into this need by summarizing the results of their eye-opening survey. What they found is clear: Students want help navigating their digital worlds. They’re asking for not just content but tools and skills to discern credibility and recognize when they’re being manipulated.

“There’s an expectation teens have of wanting to see media literacy in schools but not getting that yet,” Kim explains. Peter adds, “This is something students have a right to; it’s key to their civic empowerment.” From “zoning” information types to recognizing the influence of algorithms and AI, we explore how educators can start closing the gap between what students need and what schools are currently providing. The following are highlights from this episode:

• About Our Guests: Kim Bowman and Peter Adams are colleagues at the News Literacy Project, with Kim serving as the Senior Manager of Research and Peter serving as the Senior Vice President of Research and Design.
• More About Kim: Kim works on “all things research at the News Literacy Project.” This puts her “in touch with a lot of teachers in a lot of different classroom contexts so that [she] can learn more about what their news literacy needs and wants are.” Kim is a former middle school social studies teacher from Richmond, Virginia.
• More About Peter: Peter says, “I get to lead a team of very talented folks that work on both research and our curriculum development and professional learning programs at the News Literacy Project.” Peter oversees their weekly email newsletter for educators called The Sift. He is a former classroom teacher and has been with NLP for more than 15 years.
• An Important Mission: The mission at NLP has grown in importance. Peter says, “I really see this as something that students have a right to, and it’s a really big key to their civic empowerment and civic agency in an increasingly digital world.”
• Survey Overview: Kim explains that the survey included 37 questions with a goal to “learn about how teens think about, experience, and engage with today’s information landscape.” She adds, “We really wanted to assess the state of news literacy education in America so that we can better serve their news literacy needs.” NLP engaged with SSRS, an independent research company, to conduct a nationally representative survey of 1,110 teenagers, aged 13 to 18, in May of 2024.
• Student Attitudes About Media Literacy: The survey showed that 94% of teens said that they support a media literacy requirement in schools. However, only 39% of teens said that they had any amount of media literacy instruction in any of their classes.
• Policy Landscape: At this point, very few states require media literacy education in their K–12 schools.
• Five Standards: NLP has developed five standards around news literacy that include information types, free press, credibility, verify/analyze/evaluate, and citizenship.
• An Area of Struggle: One area that teens appear to struggle in is “zoning” information, or identifying what type of information they are viewing or hearing. Kim explains, “Zoning information is all about distinguishing between information types, like news, opinion, advertisements, entertainment.” Only 18% of teens were able to correctly answer all three questions addressing this area of news literacy. Kim adds, “We didn’t find any statistical significance when it came to older teens versus younger teens.”
• Sorting Content: Peter says, “It’s so essential as a foundational piece for everyone to be able to distinguish between different kinds of information, especially in an information environment where everything is just referred to and presented to us as content.” Without these skills, he says, “They’re really kind of left vulnerable to being manipulated by some of the folks who aren’t producing information with the same kind of honesty and transparency that some other folks are.”
• Trust in a Free Press: According to survey results, most teens said that they had a low to medium trust level with news media. For instance, 69% said that they believe that news organizations intentionally add bias to their coverage and only present facts that support their own perspective. Additionally, 80% of teens said that they believe journalists are more or equally biased compared to other content creators. Kim summarizes, saying, “There seems to be a lot of skepticism, or maybe cynicism, when it comes to how teens are viewing news media, and especially when it comes to the topic of news media bias.”
• Free Press and Democracy: Peter says, ”We also had a finding in the survey that 45% of teens said that professional journalists and the organizations they work for do more to harm democracy than protect it. . . . I think it’s a warning shot for educators all across the country to really double down on helping students understand why press protections are baked into the First Amendment, why the founding fathers felt like that was such an important thing to protect, and the role that a free and independent press plays in democracy.”
• Conspiracy Theories: Of the teens surveyed, 80% said that they see posts about conspiracy theories on their social media platforms. Kim points out, “Conspiracy theories can be incredibly enticing. They’re designed to be engaging and activating those parts of our brains that like to make sense of things that might be really complicated. They provide sort of a more simple, straightforward understanding of something when there’s shades of gray. They can make things very black and white. When you’re feeling isolated and alone, they can give you community.” She adds, “I think we’re doing teens a real disservice to not really talk about that topic and how the psychology of conspiratorial thinking works.”
• A Cumulative Effect: Even though many teens had some skepticism toward conspiracy theories, some believed at least parts of them. Peter explains, “The more of that rhetoric you hear, the more you sort of bake that into your understanding of how the world works. And again, I would argue that’s dramatically disempowering for teens—civically disempowering for them as well.”
• Accessing News: Most teens say that they keep up with news without really trying. Of the teens surveyed, 15% said that they do actively seek out news to stay informed, and 36% said that they “don’t really keep up with the news.” Kim adds, “The number one place that teens said that they’re getting news is on social media.” This type of consumption is highly impacted by usage algorithms, which can filter, redirect, and greatly impact what news teens are seeing.
• Defining News: Peter points out that when answering the survey questions, there may be differences in how teens are defining news. He adds, “We don’t know how many of those teens are actually following standards-based news organizations. And you can get credible information on social media, but you can also see a lot of people giving you hot takes, getting the facts wrong as they speculate or talk about current events and issues.”
• Artificial Intelligence: Since these survey results are from the spring of 2024, Kim cautions that the trends identified in the survey may have shifted since then, especially in the area of artificial intelligence, which is evolving rapidly. With this in mind, she says that the survey indicated “55% of teens said that they use generative AI chatbots, but only 5% reported being daily users of those chatbots. And then when it comes to AI image generators, those numbers are even lower; 33% of teens use AI image generators, but only 2% report being daily users.” She adds, “We did see that half of teens are skeptical of chatbots producing accurate and fair information, which was heartening to see.”
• Even Small Exposure: Kim points out that even a small “exposure to media literacy instruction was associated with higher trust in news media, more frequent news consumption, and increased confidence in doing reverse image searches. Teens who are on social media said that they were more likely to fact-check social media content before liking, sharing, or posting, and they were more likely to engage in civic-minded activities, such as pushing back against misinformation when they see or hear it.”
• Standards-Based News: Peter points out, “The students who actually engage with standards-based news more—and actively seek it out—demonstrate that they actually value it. They were less likely to say that journalists intentionally add bias, for example. . . . So I would just underscore that for your audience and for educators everywhere, there is a real benefit to getting exemplary journalism in front of students.”
• The Sift: NLP publishes a free, weekly email newsletter called The Sift that anyone can subscribe to. Peter explains, “It is a weekly rundown of the week in news literacy, and it includes everything from examples like that of exemplary journalism or debates in journalism—over style, over how journalists should or shouldn’t use AI, over how they should or shouldn’t cover a specific issue—to examples of viral misinformation and press freedom issues as well. So I couldn’t recommend that more . . . to educators. If they’re just getting started with news or media literacy or just want to get to know NLP, that’s a great starting point.”
• Getting Started: As a former teacher herself, Kim says, “We can go into our curriculum right now and find those entry points for bringing in news literacy. And we have great resources on our website, newslit.org, called the Framework for Teaching News Literacy and Grade Band Expectations for News Literacy. That would be a great starting point to get those ideas for entry points in your curriculum.”
• Using the Survey: Peter adds, “I also think that the survey sort of acts as a heat map and a road map for educators to hone in on very, very specific skills.” For instance, he says, distinguishing between branded content and news content is one fundamental skill that teachers could address in their classrooms. Resources from NLP can help educators make actionable plans for addressing these needs and implementing news literacy into their classrooms. Some are full lessons and others are short activities, such as those included on their free slide deck of quick literacy activities.
• Kim’s Toolkit: Kim encourages teachers to explore Checkology, a free online classroom that teachers can use to engage students in news literacy lessons. She specifically calls out lessons about conspiratorial thinking and understanding bias. She says, “If you’re not sure how to have those conversations in your classroom and you’d like a little bit more guidance on them, I think that would be a great place to start.”
• Peter’s Toolkit: In addition to Checkology and The Sift, Peter suggests looking through NLP’s Resource Library. He specifically calls out their Daily Do Now Google Slides. Peter says, “They span our five standards, so you’ll get everything from differentiating between different kinds of information to press freedoms and First Amendment watchdog stuff, to the characteristics of credibility and the standards of quality journalism, to pieces about viral misinformation or how to sort of synthesize all that and apply it as an active participant in democracy, which is our fifth standard.” He adds, “We understand that not every educator can do a 30- or 45-minute Checkology lesson. And for those who just have time for a Do Now once a week or a couple times a month, we think that’s a great option as well.”
• Nonpartisanship: Peter points out that NLP is “rigorously nonpartisan.” He says, “It’s just a vital value of ours as an organization. It also is just foundational to the field of news literacy. There is nothing partisan about the ability to find credible information.”