Young people do not read, young people are not reported, young people do not have critical ability, young people live glued to the mobile … The phrases we have listening for years without rest and always with the same protagonists on each side.
And almost always without data that sustains them, pure speculation.
Up to now.
The professor at Carlos III University of Madrid Eva Herrero, beneficiary of a Leonardo scholarship for cultural researchers and creators of the BBVA Foundation, has broken that trend with a study at 1,600 students at the stage of ESO – among 11 and 16 years.
In a first stroke: 55.5% have the networks as an informative source, 64% is unable to give the name of a journalist, 49.79% do not know how to distinguish a false head of a news and 56.8%
he likes to read.
These are the main features of a study at 1,600 Spanish adolescents about information that verifies that social networks are the life engine of this generation.
First, because 70% of them already have a mobile between 10 and 15 years, which in 2019 was 66%, according to the National Institute of Statistics.
Eva Herrero’s research details that when you are given a single option as a source of information: social networks shoot up to 55.5% bending almost to your immediate pursuer, television 29.1%.
Behind the family setting is located with 7.9%, that is, the classic group of whats app to which your uncle sends the links he finds.
And, below, are newspapers in digital version and radios.
In reality, those young people surveyed are informing or consuming entertainment?
Answer the professor of the Carlos III: “Actually it is a form of entertainment, which is what they are looking for at that age, the problem is that with that it is with what they make a supposed critical thinking, let’s not obvious that much of them can be able to
Vote in two years and if your training is going to come from an influencer is a social problem. ”
The data collected in this report does not differ largely from those who provided the Reuters Institute in its 2021 Digital News Report study with a sample in Spain that not only focused on adolescents: 78% of people consume news from online sources
, 73% do it by mobile, 55% use social networks as a information channel and 35% have as informational reference whats app.
Returning to the media literacy study in high school centers.
How is adolescents taught to consume information?, 64% of respondents can not give the name of a journalist.
And those who do so provide informants with travel in social networks: Jordi Évole, Susanna GRISO or Sara Carbonero.
“None names you an informative presenter because they do not see them?” He explains in telephone conversation the driver of the study.
Instead, as informative referents, a list of 463 Streamers, YouTubers or Influencers with Ibai Llanos appears as one of the main elections.
In the masculine case, the first 10 are men while girls do introduce some female profile as sweet or Paula Gonu, but 85% are male profiles.
“In the case of men, in no case has the name of a woman has appeared, that is quite explanatory of a gender bias,” says Eva Herreros.
The study also disgraffen that before four informative-two, two false and two fake – 50.21% is able to identify the correct ones and 49.79% not.
A testing of success that reaches 60% in news related to the Covid and is reduced to 47.5% in an example of immigration arrival.
Even so, 60% of the respondents say that it is able to differentiate between a news and a Bulo.
In the section of reading habits, 56.8% ensure that you like to read and half do so in printed version.
“There are also the books that send them in the institute or the manuals,” says the researcher, which brings that 37.1% in this case what is most consuming is also the Internet.
Once the data is exposed, the questions: Is this a new phenomenon or responding to a lack of adolescence’s own interest in factors such as information?
“Obviously that age and lack of interest are not new, but it is the factor that this generation is a consciousness in these circles. When they reach the age at which the rest we begin to interest for the press
, it is very likely that they do not do it, “says Eva Herreros.
In that case, what is the problem?
According to the researcher, the educational system and its lack of application.
Media literacy is part of all the latest educational laws in Spain, but this question is barely played in the institutes.
“Normally it is by ignorance or lack of interest that teachers,” says the professor of Carlos III.
In the study of it, when asking teachers, 16% does not even know the concept and 42% confuse it with the digital literacy.
