Almost every day, sixth grade English Language Arts teacher Erika Peek tries to find a way to include a lesson on media literacy in her classroom.
When reading a novel, for example, if there’s a historical allusion or context word, she asks her students to think more profoundly about the term.
“How can we explore that word that we don't know beyond just typing in, ‘what is this word,’” she said, “and how finding exactly what we're looking for in those searches sometimes limits our understanding rather than enhancing it.”
Peek is one of many teachers in the Monroe County Community School Corporation who is incorporating media literacy lessons in the classroom amid a time where more people are getting their news from social media, artificial intelligence is becoming more widespread and fake videos are more common.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 53 percent of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes get their news from social media. About 21 percent say they get their news from social media often.
Up to 95 percent of people between the age of 13 and 17 use a social media platform. Multiple polls show that TikTok is the main source of news for Gen Z. And more than 20 percent of the videos YouTube’s algorithm filters to new users are low-quality AI-generated content designed to get views.
To account for these changes, Peek has altered her lessons to have more direct conversations with her students about the potential traps of these videos and help them slow down and think more about what they’re seeing before accepting it as a truth.
“[It’s] getting them to understand that there are limits to the technology that seems unlimited and being able to identify what those are and how they need to find ways to fill those gaps for themselves,” she said.
Peek will also have students cross-check sources in class and compare and contrast information from different websites, videos and books. Since she started teaching in 1991, before these technologies were so prevalent, she believes reading a lot and thinking critically about what they read is crucial to becoming more media literate.
Critically thinking about the message
“Even when I was writing on a board, I was asking them [students] to look at my work. Where can you push back? Where can you ask questions? What don't you understand? You know, asking them to advocate for their own understanding,” she said. “And that, to me, is media literacy, because it's all media, anything that's allowing you to receive information is a medium, and so you must be critically thinking when that medium is being delivered to you of, does this make sense to me? And if not, what more can I ask and do to make it make sense?”
Peek said students often are technology-literate, which she doesn’t think is the same thing as being media literate. She thinks students are more patient when learning how to use technology, such as changing a font, but not as patient when it comes to checking multiple sources, verifying information and finding the right answer.
“I find them looking for shortcuts,” she said. “For example, in our research report, they just want me to tell them it's a reliable source. Once they find something that seems to address a question they have in mind, they'll ask questions like, well, it says dot gov so that means it's reliable, right? Or it says dot edu, that means it's reliable, right? And I am continuously coming back with, well, what did it actually say in the source? What's the information? And did you find it in another source? And I can see them crestfallen that there's going to be more reading coming in that. I'm not going to just say, yes, this is a reliable source. I'm not going to give that to them.”
Peek sometimes joins kids’ conversations and asks them about where they got a certain piece of information from and if they’ve verified it.
“This is a basically society trying to play telephone and pass rumors, but on steroids,” she said, “and we have to be really careful about that, because the hurt that that can cause when it's just two people in the bathroom during a bathroom break is big, and when you amplify it with all the power that technology affords us, then misunderstandings become really dire sometimes, and we want to avoid that if we can.”
In the Indiana Department of Education’s 2025-26 Elementary and Middle School Course Titles and Descriptions document, students are supposed to begin to read and respond to nonfiction works such as newspapers and online information in sixth grade language arts class.
What does media literacy education look like at the high school level?
Within the IDOE’s 2020 academic standards for English/Language Arts are topics such as digital media, when students in grades 9 through 12 are to read and interact with various news outlets and compare and contrast similar themes. Students should also be able to analyze media content used to “inform, persuade, entertain and transmit culture” and shape public opinion.
Troy Cockrum teaches sophomore-level English class, journalism and yearbook at Bloomington High School North. In his journalism class, he has his students look at different kinds of news outlets and identify biases. He finds it especially important to give lessons on the history of media and media ownership.
“Why is it brought to them in the format that it's brought to them in? Who, quote, unquote, benefits from them consuming this particular media?” he said. “Do they pay for it, or do they not pay for it? That's another thing that we go into. And I think it's just important to understand the motivations behind why it might be coming to them in the format that it's coming to them, so that then when they're consuming it, they can consume it with a broader perspective.”
Cockrum has always taught his students that if they can confirm a piece of information with three different sources, it’s most likely true. However, with how much information AI puts out on the internet, finding the same thing in more than one place doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true anymore. He also thinks the AI overview that pops up when Googling makes verifying information even harder for young students.
To combat this, he tells his students to find a few sources they trust to verify information but also look outside the algorithm and compare that information with sources you disagree with.
“I try to get them to just sort of understand that you have to do the work, and you have to be almost cynical of everything,” he said, “so that you can then look at it and say, how possible is that to be true, and then, can I verify it independently on places that I trust.”
Kathleen Mills has been a teacher at Bloomington High School South for nearly 25 years. In her time there, she has taught Advanced Placement Language and Composition, Principles of Broadcasting and Film Literature. She also oversees the student newspaper.
She integrates media literacy education into the AP Composition class. Recently, she and her students went on the AllSides website to read articles from right, left and center perspectives and analyze language differences and what sources were quoted. Sometimes, they’ll do a social media fact check; students will go through claims circulating online and find out whether they’re true or not.
With how common false websites and AI-generated videos have become, Mills said she has included more lessons on how to assess the veracity of a video. She had a similar lesson in her newspaper class when Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was taken into U.S. custody.
“We did look at how a lot of photos were circulating online that supposedly showed him being taken away by the U.S., but a lot of them were fake,” she said. “And we looked at the process that, for instance, the New York Times goes through to verify that they are getting the actual photo of him. And it was pretty, pretty tricky. I mean, they're down to the clothing he's wearing and the background.”
Mills said while it would be hard to fit in a whole class focused on media literacy, it would be worthwhile. She thinks only about 10 percent of students come into high school looking at different sources and regularly fact checking information they see online.
“A lot of students, I think, are only getting their news from social media, so they're probably not necessarily looking to see is this true or not,” she said. “I mean, they seem very open to the idea. But I was just talking to someone this morning who was showing me a picture that was supposedly a tornado that touched down in Bloomington last night, and we were just discussing, well, is this a real picture?”
Maisie Robinson grew up in a house which received the Herald Times and the New York Times every day. She would flip through the New Yorker, and regularly listen to radio news. She was exposed to different news sources early on.
But sixth grade was the first time she remembers getting a lesson on media literacy in school.
When the Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, 2020, Maisie was a sixth grader and learned about what is fake versus real news in her class. She was also told always to check her sources and not automatically believe that everything online is true.
"I remember doing this Kahoot where our teacher had one question on there that was sort of somewhat supposed to trick us,” she said, “Where it was like, which of these news organizations is unbiased? And the answer was none of them, and she wanted to make sure we understood that like there's no way to completely eliminate bias, and instead you have to learn how to recognize it.”
Now a junior at South taking Mills’ Composition class, Robinson has learned more about current events and inspecting differences between various sources, from what the headline highlights to how an article is structured.
When consuming news on her own, Robinson says she takes everything she sees online with a grain of salt. She follows major news outlets that she trusts on social media, and is careful only to share things she’s fact checked.
“When something seems like so disastrous, you're not necessarily thinking [it] through, you're probably filled with some kind of emotion, regardless of what it is, and maybe not thinking quite so much about credibility during a sort of tense moment,” she said. “And I think that's when you really have to remember, like, if you see something about, like, the percentage of people who are in ICE detention who have no criminal conviction, fact check it before you post it, because you can have a lot of things that are striking statistics that you do want to share and are real, but you can have just as many, or perhaps infinitely more, that are false. So, I think it's always good to be careful about what you share even in the heat of the moment.”
Starting at an early age
Given the advent of technology, experts say it’s crucial to start teaching kids about media literacy early on.
According to Common Sense Media, about 51 percent of children ages 8 and younger have their own mobile devices. In 2024, children 8 and under had an average screen time of about 2 hours and 27 minutes per day. Also in 2024, 39 percent of 5-to-8-year-olds used an app or device that utilized AI to learn about school-related materials.
Paul Cook teaches courses on misinformation, disinformation and post-truth at Indiana University-Kokomo. He thinks kids should be learning about media literacy at the same time they’re learning how to read and write.
“You don't want them learning about it somewhere else. You want them learning about it at home or in school or in some kind of environment like that,” he said. “…Young people are going to be exposed to these things regardless, one way or the other. And so, to the extent that we can model good behavior, provide them with tools, provide them with useful interventions, I think that is definitely the way that we should be thinking.”
Cook thinks teaching kids as young as 7 or 8 how to fact check is useful. He also recommends teaching kids how to read laterally: while reading something online, you open a new browser and see what other sources say about what you’re reading.
Peek thinks schools should be partnering with families to continue media literacy education outside of the classroom.
“[It’s] recognizing that just like any kind of learning, it doesn't stop at 4 o'clock, and it doesn't start at 8:15, it extends outside of the school day,” she said. “And in fact, some of the lessons that are learned, most critically, are coming not within the school piece. So having a constant dialogue and conversation with all of the stakeholders that care about growing a community, a future community, of people who are moving us in the right direction as a society is going to be critical.”
When it comes to higher education, Cook believes media literacy should extend far beyond English departments. The students Cook works with at the college level often know how to put together a TikTok video and have some awareness of how algorithms work but aren’t always media literate.
“There is this kind of mistaken idea that, you know, Gen Z, that young people are just like, all plugged in, and they get it and they're bebopping and scatting all over the place,” he said. “And that is not the case. They need it. They need instruction in this stuff as much as the average 65-year-old that we kind of stereotypically think of as being the one who is sitting at home getting scammed online.”
