Empowering students takes on a different shape at Richmond Hill High School in Queens, New York. Gianna Ventura, 18, is the co-editor in chief of the school’s Instagram account, which essentially fills the role of a school newspaper. She also helps facilitate a for-credit class titled, “Digital Art Through Social Media.” The class has taught her about media bias, credibility online, and journalistic standards, she said. And by giving her the space to help teach her peers and learn alongside them, it’s done more than that: “Before, it was really hard to voice my opinion in a class full of teens such as myself that have different opinions and ideologies,” Ventura said.
Some educators told Teen Vogue a crucial part of successfully meeting students’ needs in terms of news literacy is meeting them on the platforms they actually use. The Pew Research Center found that 39% of Americans under 30 regularly get news from TikTok, and a separate 2023 Pew study found that a majority of 13- to 17-year-olds report using TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram daily.
“There are people who will completely discount social media as a place to get information,” said Amy Palo, a history teacher at Cornell school district, arguing that this approach is more likely to alienate students rather than reach them. “Both political campaigns were on TikTok, right? The Washington Post is on TikTok, The New York Times is on TikTok, so when you tell them, ‘That’s not news, that’s TikTok,’ that’s not going to help get through to them. I think affirming the idea that these are great places to start is helpful.”
One of Palo’s former students, Neveah Rice, 18, said her approach to information gathering has changed since she started learning about media literacy. “I still do get information from TikTok and Instagram, but the difference is that now I actually go and fact-check it before believing it.” (The News Literacy Project has a TikTok account of its own, featuring bite-size rebuttals of conspiracy theories that spread among teens, most recently, that Hurricane Helene was a manufactured event.)
Most of all, educators said, students respond well to learning about news literacy through cases that are directly relevant to their lives. Anna Meyer, a history teacher at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, said she had students look at media coverage of a state ballot question involving eligibility requirements to graduate from high school. Klein, the librarian at Cornell school district, said she has taught students about online scams using examples of phishing texts or direct messages the students themselves received.
Nicole Murphy, the health educator at North Salem Middle/High School in North Salem, New York, teamed up with the school’s library media specialist and had her students analyze what kinds of health claims tend to crop up when they are scrolling on social media. For many, especially the girls in her class, these claims had to do with weight loss and “detoxing” your body. Students then practiced their fact-checking skills on posts chosen from their own social media feeds.
