As adults, we know how difficult the modern information environment has become. We open a legitimate news article and encounter sponsored links that resemble journalism. We search for a simple answer and receive advertisements, summaries, recommendations, and AI-generated responses before reaching the original source. We see confident claims shared thousands of times before anyone asks whether they are true.

If this environment is difficult for adults, we should not expect students to navigate it without guidance. Media literacy is no longer optional or the responsibility of one teacher. It is essential preparation for understanding today’s world.

Where People Find Their News Has Changed

According to a 2025 Pew Research Center report, 53 percent of American adults get news from social media at least sometimes. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 43 percent regularly get news from TikTok and 40 percent from Instagram. Pew’s research on teenagers also found that about four in ten or more teen users of TikTok and Instagram identify news as one reason they use those platforms.

Students may encounter news alongside entertainment, advertising, and commentary from people they admire. A creator may be informative while also being sponsored, mistaken, or missing important context. Students need to ask who created a message, what evidence supports it, what may be missing, and why it reached them.

Media Literacy Belongs Across the Curriculum

Media literacy is sometimes treated as a social studies topic, but it belongs throughout the school day. Social studies helps students compare accounts and evaluate evidence. Language arts develops their understanding of purpose, perspective, and rhetoric. Science teaches them to distinguish reliable evidence from unsupported claims.

Research on disciplinary source evaluation found that social studies emphasized lateral reading, science focused on authorship and expertise, and English explored perspective and bias. A 2025 study of argument writing across these subjects also demonstrated the value of helping students examine evidence and multiple perspectives.

The goal is not to make students cynical. It is to make them curious, careful,
and confident enough to pause before accepting or sharing a claim.

AI Changes the Challenge

Artificial intelligence can summarize information, generate convincing media, imitate voices, and provide immediate answers. It can also produce inaccurate information confidently and make it difficult to identify the source of an idea.

Today, the best use of AI is as an assistant. It can help us brainstorm, organize, question, revise, and explore without replacing our judgment or taking ownership of the work. Recent research on critical AI literacy similarly describes AI as a tool that can augment teaching and learning rather than replace educator expertise.

Will that always be the case? In the video Why It Won’t Matter If AI Is a Billion Times Smarter Than Us, the countdown to what might be considered computer genius has already started. Whether or not every prediction proves accurate, schools must teach more than prompting. Students need to understand what they are delegating, which skills they may stop practicing, and when human judgment must remain in charge.

From Trusted News to Chumboxes

Media literacy must also address what writer Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification.” The intentionally blunt term describes how platforms can begin by serving their users and gradually prioritize revenue, growth, or control over the people who made them valuable.

Adults have already watched this happen. One visible example is the chumbox, the collection of sensational thumbnails and headlines often found beneath legitimate news stories. They may appear to be recommended journalism, but they are frequently paid links designed to generate clicks. Headlines about miracle cures, celebrity secrets, or shocking discoveries borrow credibility from the news organization surrounding them.

A recent Columbia Journalism Review article examined how this model is evolving as advertising companies add generative AI features to news websites. The line between journalism, advertising, recommendation systems, and AI-generated information can become increasingly difficult for readers to see.

Students need to understand that the platform delivering information is not neutral. A recommendation system may show what generates another click, reaction, or purchase instead of what is most accurate or important. As AI makes content faster and cheaper to produce, students must ask not only whether a message is true, but why a platform placed it in front of them.

Who benefits from this recommendation? What is the system optimizing for? Am I using this tool to strengthen my thinking, or am I turning my thinking over to it?

Preparing Students for the World We Created

In Preparing Students for the World We Actually Created, I argued that schools cannot prepare children for the world we wish existed. We must prepare them for the information environment surrounding them while helping them develop the judgment to improve it.

This means giving students guided opportunities to examine authentic content, recognize manipulation, understand algorithms, question AI-generated material, and make responsible decisions. Avoiding difficult information may delay the challenge, but it does not prepare students to meet it.

Trusted Foundations and New Approaches

The Illinois Media Literacy Coalition brings together educators, practitioners, and scholars to identify effective practices and support thoughtful media consumption and creation. Its Illinois-centered work connects research with the realities of our schools and communities.

Common Sense Media offers free, research-backed K-12 lessons covering media literacy, artificial intelligence, social media, digital footprints, cyberbullying, and digital well-being. These resources give schools a practical foundation across grade levels.

ClassIQ is exploring another approach by using influencers, creators, and recognizable voices to introduce digital citizenship, online safety, and media literacy. Familiar voices may capture students’ attention, but they should begin the conversation, not replace educator guidance.

Media Literacy Week Is a Starting Point

U.S. Media Literacy Week takes place October 26 through 30, 2026, alongside UNESCO’s Global Media and Information Literacy Week. The work, however, must continue throughout the year.

IDEA’s Media Literacy Spotlight Community connects Illinois educators who are testing classroom practices, sharing resources, and learning from one another. Our responsibility is not to tell students what to think or pretend we know exactly where AI will lead. It is to help them determine what deserves their trust, recognize when technology is supporting or replacing their thinking, and participate thoughtfully in the world we have created.