It’s harder than ever to tell what’s real from what’s not online. A new national report from the Watertown-based nonprofit Media Literacy Now tracks how states are responding — or failing to respond — through media and digital literacy education policy, and where gaps remain between legislation and classroom reality.
Kyra Brissette, CEO of Media Literacy Now, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to break down the report’s findings. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: I’m excited to talk about this because I’ve been deep into media literacy for decades now. When I was a kid, it was very simple, and it was more about thinking about advertising, right? And then, with the rise of the internet, things got more complicated — with social media, even more complicated. But let’s talk about where we are in 2026, with the rise of AI and so many media platforms. What does media literacy mean right now?
Kyra Brissette: It’s interesting. I first kind of want to say I come at this from the perspective of a CEO, but I also come at this from the perspective of a parent. I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, so this is very close to my heart, as I think it is for more parents out there.
Rath: Oh, yeah.
Brissette: I think it’s interesting because media literacy is really those critical thinking skills — the ability to be critical thinkers and navigate all types of media in a safe and healthy way. We really believe that teaching media literacy doesn’t need to mean adding more onto a teacher’s plate or doing a one-off lesson. It really needs to be woven and embedded into subject areas.
What’s interesting from our policy report is that each subject area looks at it differently. You’ve talked a little bit about news literacy, but you also have to think about digital wellness. You’ve got AI out there. You’ve got social media. And so you start to bring in the health curriculum in the digital literacy curriculum. You also have to think about science and think about how you find trustworthy scientific information.
It’s really interesting because I think everybody in all different subject areas thinks about media literacy in different ways, and we really think about it as this umbrella term that encompasses a lot.
Rath: The impact report looks at how states are responding through education policy, and we’ll want to zoom in on Massachusetts, but first, let’s look more broadly across the nation — and maybe lead with a positive, because there are some good initiatives that are going out there.
Brissette: It’s true. It’s really interesting, the legislative activity. We have had 11 new states since 2024 put into action media literacy legislation. So now, we have more than half of the states in the U.S. taking legislative action, and I think it really reflects that sense of urgency from constituencies that legislators are seeing this as a priority.
We’re seeing a lot of things, from a cellphone bill that includes not only thinking about how to ban cellphones or limit cellphones in school, but how we need to add that education piece to it, because the fact is — whether it’s during the day or after school — young people are engaging with media all the time, and they need to be taught those skills to be critical thinkers, so we’re seeing that in a lot of states.
We’re also seeing AI literacy bills coming out. With AI chatbots and images that come out that we can’t distinguish, it’s essential for them to have these skills to figure out what all of that means, and what the impact of the systems behind them are, who is creating those messages.
Rath: In terms of what’s lacking … maybe that’s a good transition into Massachusetts, because, honestly, scanning through the report, the most exciting things aren’t happening in Massachusetts right now.
Brissette: I think that’s true, in terms of legislation, that there’s a gap there. But there’s also a gap between what the laws require and what actually happens in the classroom. So many states have passed these media literacy mandates, but the teacher training, the curriculum guidance and the funding often lag behind.
I think Massachusetts is interesting because they have changed their standards in health to include media literacy, and those are the standards that teachers look at to say, “What do I ned to teach in a Massachusetts health or phys ed classroom?” We have a little bit in our social studies, in the eighth-grade area; they have a media literacy unit that they teach at that grade level.
There are a lot of ways to get media literacy into the classroom, and legislation is just one of those.
Rath: Keeping on Massachusetts, what would you say would be the most important thing, legislatively or otherwise, that Massachusetts should be doing next?
Brissette: The big thing is provide a model for guidance. How do we do this in the districts and provide the resources to go with that? Facilitate collaboration. We have some amazing things happening in different school districts that really should be shared. The Maynard District in Massachusetts did a great job at assessing their media literacy needs and what was missing from their classroom. They did a whole small scan of their district to look at that.
There are great leadership opportunities from librarians and technology specialists who are doing this in Massachusetts. In fact, just this summer, we had the AI Task Force out of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education do a multi-year AI roadmap. How are they going to teach AI literacy in K-12? And that started, I think, seven pilot programs across Massachusetts working on that.
I think there are a lot of different ways to encourage the integration of media literacy into local districts and into their curriculum.
Rath: I’m wondering about how you might think that cellphone bans in schools might fit into this. A lot of the problems that we’re talking about, in terms of bad information, I know that people think [a ban] might be a good way to help, at least a bit.
Brissette: It’s really interesting. Cellphone bans and social media restrictions can help, but they’re not enough on their own. Limiting access without education misses that chance to build those lifelong skills. Media literacy skills help students become those critical, responsible, independent thinkers in the digital world.
Just because you ban or limit cellphones and social media doesn’t mean it’s going to stop that flow of information. I really think it’s a missed opportunity for the bills that are doing these restrictions and bans to not include education as a part of them.
Rath: Finally, you mentioned that you’re a parent. For parents who are super concerned about this — all the media that kids carry around in their back pocket — what advice would you have for them? What’s something they can do right now?
Brissette: I think one of the best things you can do is look for the resources that are out there. We certainly have some on Media Literacy Now’s website. [Boston] Children’s Hospital and the Digital Wellness Lab at Harvard do a phenomenal job at talking about media literacy and digital wellness at that basic level of when your kid is a preschooler or in elementary school, and kind of stepping you through that process.
There are also some really easy ways to look at the platforms that your children are on and think about how you manage that. I think looking at the resources that are out there has been tremendously helpful for me as a parent, and having those open conversations. Kids get a lot of information. It’s really important that you’re talking about it. It’s important that you’re modeling that behavior, too; we’re on all sorts of devices all of the time, and so thinking about what we’re reading and what the messages are is super important, and explaining that to your children is key.
