Middle Schoolers and Screens Webinar Event
The Children’s Media Lab welcomed a panel of five international media literacy and adolescent well-being experts and over 40 guests to the Middle Schoolers and Screens: Reimagining the Positive Potential of Media for 12- to 14-Year-Olds webinar. This event aimed to bring positive media psychology insights into media literacy education for middle schoolers, to complement media literacy’s current emphasis on harm prevention, critical thinking, and media making. This webinar was the first of multiple events that the Children’s Media Lab will host in collaboration with the Media Research and Innovation Lab, as part of a research project funded by the Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and led by Charles Davis. This research project probes the needs of youth aged 12 to 14 years old, and uses positive psychology principles to generate ideas about how to design meaningful media for this demographic.
Our webinar included five esteemed experts: Dr. Laura D’Olimpio (Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom), Matthew Johnson (Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital media literacy), Dr. Ali Reza Bastani (the founder and CEO of the Association of Iran Media Literacy [AIMEL]), Dr. Heather Malin (a leading researcher and consultant in youth purpose development and education), and Dr. Linda Charmaraman (founder and director of the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab and senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women). Our panelists shared rich insights about the current state of international media literacy initiatives; early adolescents’ desires and needs pertaining to media content and devices; how early adolescents can leverage educational, entertainment, and interactive media to support their well-being; and how to best engage early adolescents in content creation and media policy development.
Listen to the recording of our Webinar below.
The Children’s Media Lab partnered with Dr Charles Davis/the Media Innovation Lab on this project. The research was sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).