Is Media Literacy Important?

"Media Literacy is the ability to create, construct and evaluate media texts and to understand the concepts put to the audience"


In order to address this question I carried out a survey asking 12 people a variety of questions in order to determine how media literate the consuming public are in today's heavily media-using society. To ensure more accurate results I asked range of people from all ages, half of which were male and the other half female.
I asked a series of questions to determine their use of different media types, their competence with media technology and the regularity of their usage.

I asked;
6 Women - 2 between 0-20 years of age
2 between 21-40 years of age
2 40 years and over

6 Men - 2 - 0-20
2 - 21-40
2 - 40 and over

I found that the results varied not only depending on age and gender but also between the different types of media that was used. For example I found that is was males up to the age of 20 that were the most competent in using gaming media.
In general, according to my results, people are generally media literate on basic levels largely depending on their need for certain types of media, fitting into their line of work or their hobbies, such as emails, accessing the Internet, watching films and music, gaming or their use of cameras and camcorders. It is largely on a basic level mainly because they only tend to have a competence for accessing and gaining information from certain media rather than being able to create media messages fluently.

I believe that Media Literacy is important as it enables us to make our own choices and judgements and allows us to express our own views effectively and creatively. It also is important to people on a daily basis, it allows us to know what is happening around us on numerous levels, be it politically, financially or artistically. It represents the freedom we are given living in a democratic society and having a market based economy. It presumes that we, the people, are smart, capable and responsible.
However Media Literacy does raise the issue of its affect on the newer generation, some people argue that media literacy is responsible for 'dumbing' down to days youth as they are being bombarded all the time by numerous sources of media. Others however say its sharpening minds rather than blunting them, making us more capable of expression and artistic and technological advancements. Personally I feel that, as with many things it is a complex mixture of both as there is always a con to every pro, therefore it is only to the extent of its effect that can be argued.