Young adults’ social network practices and the development of their media literacy competences: a quantitative study

ABSTRACT

Social networks are used by millions of people. These platforms are very popular with young audiences but also raise a growing number of questions: What are young people doing on social networks? What do they read and produce? Do they engage in a variety of activities? Are they media literate in relation to these social networks, and how do they develop these competences? This article focuses on the relationships between young adults’ social network practices and the development of their media literacy competences. Based on responses from 350 Belgian young adults, we identify profiles based on frequency and diversity of their practices. These profiles correlate with different levels of media literacy. We observe no relationship between frequency of participants’ reception practices (reviewing their newsfeed, reading posts, conducting in-depth research) and the development of their media literacy competences. However, we observe that the more young adults diversify these reception practices, the better their media literacy competences are. Conversely, and surprisingly, the more often they produce media content and the more they diversify these production practices (creating and sharing posts), the less media literate they appear to be.

KEYWORDS:

• Social networks
• social network practices
• social media
• media literacy
• media literacy competences

Acknowledgements

The author wish to thank the ‘Groupe de Recherche en Médiation des Savoirs’ (GReMS), and its president, Pierre Fastrez, who accompanied this study and give precious advice in the writing of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camille Tilleul

Camille Tilleul is PhD in information and communication. She has worked on various projects that address the media literacy and media education competences of different audiences: she joined the scientific evaluation committee of the IHECS Master's degree in media education where she evaluated the students’ competences both transversally and longitudinally. She took part in the European E-MEL project, which aimed to design an online laboratory on the development of media literacy skills for teachers in initial and in-service training. In 2020, she wrote a doctoral thesis on the relationship between young adults’ practices on social networks and the development of their media literacy competences. She is now working on a post-doctoral project in which she is evaluating the media education activities of a journalism school. [email: [email protected]].