National Social Media Literacy Survey

Group of multiracial students taking selfies with mobile phone. Classmates together having fun.

Problem

Social media literacy education is disconnected from the reality of teens’ lives.

Social media is ubiquitous in teen life and informs how they communicate, self-express, and engage with the world. There is ample information on the positive and negative roles social media can play in teens’ lives. On one hand, these platforms offer opportunities for creativity, self-expression, and community-building; on the other hand, they present challenges related to social comparison, misinformation, and well-being.

Social media literacy education may be an important tool for helping young people navigate online spaces responsibly and critically, but there are significant gaps in our understanding of what constitutes effective and impactful programming for teens. Research is needed to better understand teens’ experiences with and preferences for social media literacy education. Building this evidence base will be critical to designing educational programming that supports teens’ successful navigation of online spaces.

foundry10, an education research organization based in Seattle, Washington, is interested in exploring if and how teens learn the skills needed to navigate social media environments.

Solution

NORC is conducting the first nationally representative study of teen preferences on social media literacy education.

The Bridge at NORC is supporting foundry10 in conducting a nationally representative survey of adolescents aged 14 to 18. By leveraging the AmeriSpeak Teen Panel and TrueNorth to enroll ~1,000 teens across the United States, the NORC team will provide a probability sample of American teenagers representative of U.S. adolescents ages 14-18 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This data collection will provide a generalizable snapshot of U.S. teens online, offering a unique opportunity to answer important questions about whether teens receive social media education, if they find it useful, and how they would like to see it improved.

Result

This survey will set the stage for more relevant, effective social media literacy education for teens.

NORC will support foundry10 in disseminating survey findings to a wide array of audiences, including educators and school leaders, youth-serving organizations and practitioners, researchers and academics, parents and caregivers, and technology and social media companies. White papers and tools derived from this dataset will provide information and resources to design more relevant and inclusive social media literacy programs for teens to reflect the realities of their online lives.