Generational differences – Media Health Literacy
Suicide attempts, eating disorders, sexual assault, and substance abuse.
Sadly, we are all highly acquainted with these problems when thinking about Media. Media is so embedded within our daily lives that ages ranging from adolescence to older generations forget the impact or necessity of media health. However, these effects on the different generations differ.
The main difference starts with the fact that today’s youth grew up with the influences of digital tools, while the older generations had to adapt to them later in their lives. Adapting this to media health might make you ask yourself which generation is more gullible or more concerned about media health illiteracy.
Media controls the life of adolescents
Regarding adolescents: the Media controls their lives. Whether they want it to or not, Media is part of their life. As a young adult myself, I admit that my mind is entertained by social media from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. It feels like I came out of the womb swiping through Instagram!
Therefore, like many other young adults, I get influenced by the intense influx of fashion, appearances, and opinions. To some extent, there is always an inevitable comparison I make between myself and the people I see online. But don’t we all?
Do not worry; this is the case with many adolescents that get influenced to the extent that they no longer feel good about themselves. Here we see an increase in suicides, substance abuse, and eating disorders. However, body image and acceptance also lead to a rise in sexual assault. Teenagers are vulnerable to people they might never have met in real life; however, online, the possibility for sexual predators is far greater. The access made possible through social media used by adolescents every day makes it far easier for sexual assault to occur.
Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash
What can we do about it?
We need to increase adolescents’ media health literacy. If young adults become more aware of the competencies of media health literacy, they could understand what they see online and how to apply that to their health. This awareness would empower young adults to become more and more capable of caring for their own media health.
The influence of the Media is growing every day, especially in times of the pandemic, when adolescence might be completely cut off from their friends, school, and typical real-life surroundings. In this vulnerable time, they have no other option than to sink further into the influences of the media. When there is such limited connection to the outside world, we need to make media health literacy much more accessible. There need to be more intervention initiatives for young adults that can empower those who feel affected by the media!
Parents, Grand-Parents, and older Relatives
Looking at the older generation of people affected by media health, we see some apparent differences. To start, we can say that many older people are simply less affected. The problem we need to address for this generation is that they lack access to many digital tools and are therefore excluded from many benefits that these tools could have.
We have all probably experienced the challenge of explaining aspects of the digitalized world to our parents or older people surrounding us. Some might have even needed to help relatives with health concerns. Therefore, enabling older people the access to search for their own health benefits online would encourage them to be more aware of their own health.
Photo by George Arthur Pfueger on Unsplash
Identifying the issue
Let’s look at older people’s current situation during this pandemic. We can imagine the difficulty they have experienced getting appropriate and balanced information if they are no longer able to leave their house. Or relatives not being able to help them search for the newest information about vaccines, treatments, or services in general. Though we can’t change the pandemic, we can change the awareness of Media Health Literacy in older generations.
One of older generations’ primary searches regarding media health concerns the newest medical technologies, treatments, and services. However, where they lack the competence in identifying reliable health websites, the accuracy of the information given, and the most recent health updates. However, there is still limited research about media health among older people and what we can do to help. We need to provide them with the possibility to care for their own health through more accessibility in e-health literacy.
Even though adolescents and older people are differently affected by media health literacy, we can see that they do have a similar situation in these times. The isolation of this pandemic is providing concern for all generations. Everyone should have access to all information regarding the effect of media health literacy! Everyone should have what’s best for their own health care!
Hi Heidi!
There has always been sources of comparison between people. Women see ‘perfect’ women in magazines, on television, etc. How can we explain that social media has such a negative impact on body image compared to more ‘traditional’ media?
Thank you for your comment! Below are two articles that go into more depth about body image and the media. However, comparing the effect of social media and traditional media on body image has not yet fully been explored properly. I would say that social media is just so much more accessible for everyone that it has more possibility to affect ones body image.
Links:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190311-how-social-media-affects-body-image
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/55388
Nice blog post!
You mention the older generation’s struggle to find accurate information during the pandemic, but did you come across any differences between the older and newer generations when it comes to finding health-related information during the pandemic? If so, what was the main difference?
Thank you for commenting! I would say one of the main differences older generations and younger ones have when finding health-related information during the pandemic is that younger people find it easier to dissect information online. Adolescents spend most of their time online and even have to spend hours online for school work. Therefore, they are already more acquainted with filing through information online and finding reliable sources. They might even get help from school. However, I would say that adolescents might be even less familiar with medical terminology, so older generations would be more able to understand the implications of the information they are reading. I hope this helps.
Hello Heidi! Interesting insight! 😄
When I think of social media and other generations different than mine, what comes to my mind is my mom telling me that the source of every problem – literally every problem I could have in my life – is my phone. I obviously disagree. I wish one day she, meaning her generation, could come to the realization that there are also several positive aspects associated with social media. Do you think that, beyond health matters, they could see the benefits of this technology? Or is their lifestyle (influencers aside) so different and used to other kinds of living, entertainment, problem-solving that it is just impossible to reconcile the two worlds?
That is a great question because I feel the same way. My parents always find a way to connect my problems to technology. While I don’t think my parents will ever change their ways, I found a great article (I will link it below) that suggests that many more Baby Boomers and Gen X are following in the footsteps of Millenials and Gen Z because they want to continue being connected to their children and grandchildren. And frankly, we, as Millenials/Gen Z are not giving them much choice in the matter. For example, more and more get Whatsapp or Facebook just to be able to connect and stay in contact with their children and friends.
Link:
https://insights.digitalmediasolutions.com/articles/technology-adoption-older-generations
Hi, what an interesting post!
You explained that for the different generations, the problems of digital media are different. Do you think that efforts to solve these problems could take advantage of this, and should take an approach where the generations learn from each other?
Thanks for your comment! The is a good question, I think that because the problems are so different there might be difficult to find common ground. However, the younger generations do help the older generations already. For example, by explaining how to do certain things online/on the phone/ on the computer. I think older generations try to help younger generations, however, they might not always understand where they are coming from having never experienced technology growing up and the severe influence it has on adolescents everyday life. I do hope that there might be more common ground in the future.
Hi, I really enjoyed finding out a bit more about media health literacy. It is actually a term I’ve never heard before, so thank you for enlightening me! I was still wondering about the part of what we can do to help adolescents in improving their media health literacy. Would you happen to know some programs/courses/help campaigns in Europe which are aiming at improving media health literacy for adolescents?
Great comment! There are multiple initiatives taken in the EU to promote safer social media use for adolescents. For example, workshops initiated by the European Council, the safer internet day, and a Cyber Security Month. Below you can find more information on how and who is trying to help adolescents who struggle with safe internet use.
Links for further reading:
https://cybersecuritymonth.eu
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/safer-internet-day
https://jwilson2-58954.medium.com/the-essence-of-adolescence-how-mental-health-campaigns-on-social-media-are-helping-to-break-the-8b2f0c14cc5
https://www.fastcompany.com/90356260/social-media-can-hurt-you-these-6-tips-from-a-psychologist-could-help
Hey Heidi!! Your post is really well written, easy to read and interesting. It is crazy how this pandemic impacted our lives from so many different perspectives! Your post makes a very clear difference between the younger and the older generations. What you describe is as present in my life as in yours. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is opening my phone and check what people texted me, posted on social media, eventually update their Facebook profile. However, with only few words (few in the sense that you have not written a book about it but only a blog post) you make me reflect on the dangerous consequences that the lifestyle we have can have on people. I have to say that this post really makes me understand the urgency of media health literacy and yeah I discussed how I relate to the younger one but I completely see the urgency of media health literacy on the older one as well. However, I also have to say that maybe in the last few years, ‘media literacy’ is becoming more and more a concern in our societies. Maybe we are in the right direction for media health literacy as well. What do you think? Also, do you think there should be any government intervention?
Thank you, Matilde! I really appreciate how you relate to my blog. I believe that there already is some government intervention. Below I have attached a link about the European Commission, which shows that there is even some EU-wide intervention. Media Health Literacy is really important especially today in this pandemic. I suggest you read Judith’s blog on policies in a pandemic, as she further develops the initiatives governments make to help everyone understand the pandemic policies. I hope this helps! 🙂
Link:
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/safer-internet-day