A report out today confirms what you already know: most kids have never opened a newspaper and get all their news from social media
Hello folks – |
| Newsletters from me are like the 381 bus …. nothing for weeks, and then two come along in quick succession. |
| And that’s because there’s just been so much going on in the media literacy and misinformation space in the past week. |
| We’re still on a high following last week’s announcement by the South Australian government of a partnership to make sure Newshounds – our classroom program for primary school kids teaching them to Stop, Think and Check when they’re online – gets into every school in SA. |
| And today there was another update on why programs like Newshounds have become more important than ever. |
| I’m talking about the release of The Digital News Report: Australia 2026 by our clever friends at the University of Canberra. Professor Sora Park (a great friend of Squiz Kids and Newshounds) led the research which showed social media continues to surge as the place Australians (especially younger ones) get their news and information. |
| As Uni of Canberra VC, Bill Shorten so aptly put it this morning, we are now officially living “in an age where anyone with a megaphone can report the news”. |
| There were some encouraging signs in the report, especially around the interest young people are taking in news and the willingness generally of more Australians to pay for news. |
| But as Professor Park points out it is not mainstream media young people are turning to for news, with 60% of people under 25 never having read a newspaper and more than half never having listened to news on the radio. |
| So where are they getting their sense of what’s happening in the world? Overwhelmingly from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube .. and overwhelmingly, from influencers they follow there. |
| To quote Professor Park writing in The Conversation: “This creates a more fluid relationship with news that is driven by algorithms, social networks, and personal interests rather than routines established by mainstream news outlets.” |
| Which brings me neatly to comments made recently by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the heroic Julie Inman-Grant. |
| It’s her job to police the Federal Government’s social media ban for under 16s – which recent reports tell us is not working (as indeed every parent of a kid who’s still scrolling away uninterrupted on TikTok or Snapchat could have told you that). |
| In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Inman-Grant said she was only ever going to be as effective as the tools of enforcement and resources she was given by the government. |
| Moreover, she added: “What you’re effectively asking us to do with this (ban) is fence the ocean. We might be able to create some friction and some degree of safety, but it’s a futile exercise if you think you’re totally stemming the ocean.” |
| And herein lies the rub. |
| You can’t fence the ocean. But you can teach kids to swim. And that’s what media literacy education does. That’s what Newshounds does. |
| The South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas and his government have understood this. Now we just need the rest of the country to catch up. |
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