Improving children’s wellbeing through media literacy education: An Irish study

Via diverse content including programmes, songs and child-led social media channels, children are constantly exposed to commercially funded messages encouraging purchase behaviour. While there is no definitive agreement that advertising to children is detrimental to their wellbeing (Rowthorn, 2019), there is an enduring concern over the unintended effects of advertising on children (Opree et al., 2019). A substantive body of literature advocates for media literacy education to enable children to critically assess the content of marketing messages (De Pauw et al., 2018; Nelson, 2016). However, there is a dearth of research focusing specifically on the relationship between media practices of children, in terms of activities and competencies, and their wellbeing at pre-teen ages (Swist et al., 2015). This study responds to that gap by piloting a recently launched media literacy intervention designed to complement wellbeing curriculum in Irish primary schools, exploring if media literacy competences can improve children’s wellbeing.