Professor Ruth Page (University of Birmingham), Dr Alex Christiansen (University of Birmingham), Professor Michael Larkin (Aston University), Dr Shioma-Lei Craythorne and Professor Paul Crawford (University of Nottingham), Emma Garavini (The McPin Foundation), Eva Asiedu-Addo (The McPin Foundation)—written evidence (MLI0015)

House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee inquiry: Media literacy

Executive Summary

• This written evidence is a response to the inquiry into ‘media literacy’ by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee.

• Drawing on findings from our study about social media influencers as unregulated sources of health communication, we are interested primarily in the importance of media literacy needed to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing. This submission addresses the following questions from the inquiry: 1) ‘What are the risks and consequences of not achieving good media literacy?’ (see section 1) 2) ‘Which actors have a role to play in improving media literacy in the UK?’ (see section 2)

• We live in an age where media literacy as ‘the ability to use, understand and create media’ safely is increasingly important for accessing information about mental health, particularly for young people. Mis- and dis-information is rife, and the brevity of short-form social media content means information is often incomplete or taken out of context.

• This submission argues that media literacy should go beyond the cognitive skills required to judge the accuracy of information. We also need socio-emotional skills to evaluate how best to use online content and so foster good mental health.

• We take a holistic approach to supporting media literacy, understanding it to be shaped by informal contexts of social media practice and wider socio-cultural patterns of behaviour that require a multi-faceted response on the part of government, tech companies, educators and peer-support networks.

• The practical recommendations of this submission are:

• Media literacy in relation to mental health should be provided in peer-to-peer learning approaches within the formal educational curriculum in the United Kingdom.

• Initiatives like TikTok’s UK Clinician Creator Network and its STEM network can be used as a model of good practice for creating and recognising reliable content. However, further measures on the part of tech companies are needed to verify both the accuracy of short-form information and credentials of creators discussing mental health.

• An evaluation of existing resources aimed at families (e.g. by charities, third sector organisations) needs to highlight commonalities and best practice, and this form of peer support should be better promoted via communication from formal education and social care organisations.

About the Authors

1. This written evidence was jointly authored by Professor Ruth Page and Dr Alex Christiansen (University of Birmingham), Professor Michael Larkin and Dr Shioma-Lei Craythorne (Aston University), Professor Paul Crawford (University of Nottingham), and Emma Garavini and Eva Asiedu-Addo (The McPin Foundation).

2. The written evidence incorporates findings from published and unpublished studies that are part of the ESRC funded project: Influencer Stories of Mental Health and Young People (ES-Y001966-1). Influencer Stories is run by an interdisciplinary team with roots in linguistics, social science, psychology and lived experience focused on youth mental health. The written evidence draws on our analysis of 27,000 TikTok videos, two workshops with mental health professionals and experts by lived experience, 12 focus groups with 75 young people (age 16-19 years old) and interviews with 13 young people (aged 19-25) with lived experience of mental health challenges. The participant data was collected November 2024-February 2025 in the UK.

3. The written evidence is presented in a personal capacity, independently of the University of Birmingham, Aston University, University of Nottingham and the McPin foundation.

Section 1: Why media literacy matters

4. Media literacy includes the aspects set out by Ofcom: ‘The ability to use, understand and create media and communications across multiple formats and services.’ More fully, ‘good’ media literacy includes critical thinking skills such as making informed decisions, problem solving, judging the reliability of information,[1] multimodal literacies and ethical principles in the form of cyber-wisdom, which incorporates civic and moral dimensions.[2]

5. The contemporary media landscape is dominated by image and video-based sites and platforms where networked online context is driven by algorithmic principles that ‘push’ content to audiences across a range of sites and services.

6. In the current mental health emergency, one in three young people in the UK are turning to social media for help.[3] Media literacy thus intersects with mental health literacy, that is the ability to recognise mental illness; knowledge of how to seek help; how to obtain positive mental health; attitudes relating to mental illness and to help-seeking.[4] Social media influencers are key players in this context but are largely unregulated: lay persons and medical experts alike may offer information and advice.

7. Medical misinformation in social media presents a potential risk to people’s health, with pseudoscientific rhetoric used within the wellness industry to promote inaccurate and unreliable solutions. The mental health professionals who participated in our research considered some supplements recommended by wellness influencers dangerous, increasing risks to physical health, exacerbating existing mental health conditions and isolating young people from more reliable professional help.

8. This phenomenon is not new, but the ease of access to unregulated supplements online has increased the urgency with which young people need to develop the cognitive skills to judge information as trustworthy, given that many of the conditions targeted by the wellness industry in our data (e.g. hormone health, acne and anxiety) do not have easy medical solutions and may increase the likelihood that a young person turns to exploitative and ineffective solutions in the form of supplements.

9. While many young people (age 16-18) in our study showed that they possessed the skills required to evaluate content and information, some techniques for checking the validity of information were simplistic and relied on ‘the wisdom of the crowds’, (e.g. using comments or view counts as indicators of quality). Although many knew what to do when faced with misinformation, few expressed motivation in deploying these critical thinking and navigational skills.

10. Our study found widespread distrust of online content. On the one hand, distrust of commercialised intent and figures with proportionally high media visibility appears to indicate a healthy scepticism towards unregulated sources of information like influencers. However, that same scepticism appears levelled at regulated medical professionals as well and this may have carry-on effects on local sectors like the NHS.

11. Videos that successfully captured the attention and trust of the young people tended to appeal to the affective dimensions of trust.[5] Emotional videos were considered ‘authentic’ and engaging, with young people reporting that they were drawn into watching unhelpful content as a result.

12. Not knowing how to use the information about mental health found online effectively may lead to self-diagnosis.[6] While this may be a helpful starting point for some, this was not seen in positive terms by most of the young people in our study, leading instead to social difficulties, not being believed and the trivialisation of some conditions.

13. A further negative outcome from poor media literacy found in our study is the over-interpretation of mental health information found online. In our analysis we saw repeated conflation of common psychological experiences with disorders like anxiety and depression, an approach that may lead the audience to exhibit hypervigilance or an increase in the severity of symptoms, leading to elevated rates of mental health problems in line with the prevalence inflation hypothesis.[7]

Section 2. Media Literacy – A Holistic Perspective

14. Young people do not use social media in a vacuum. They produce and consume media content in a range of contexts, for a range of purposes, including education, entertainment, connecting with friends and switching off during downtime. Their media literacy is shaped by the beliefs and behaviour of family members and friends, which in turn are interwoven with societal attitudes towards gendered identities, ethnicity and race. Improving media literacy requires a holistic approach that takes place in both formal and informal contexts for learning.

15. Tech companies vary in the extent to which they support media literacy. In 2025, Meta withdrew fact-checking. In 2024, TikTok launched a global Youth Council to prioritise teen wellbeing, a UK Clinician Creator Network and a fact-checked STEM feed available in Europe. Pinterest’s Impact Lab works with US based partners to support the emotional intelligence needed within media literacy. However, these initiatives are not often known about by young people in the UK,[8] and more awareness of good practice is needed.

16. Across our data, there were calls for tech companies to provide better systems of verification (e.g. of the validity of credentials claimed by content creators) and regulating access to content based on the user’s age (e.g. requiring further email verification from parents). These tools are needed to help young people make better decisions about the content that they consume.

17. There is a need raise awareness and ensure more consistent access to resources that support families and carers in developing good media literacy. Our participants felt their families’ understanding of media literacy lagged their own and was based on their parents’ childhood experiences. However, there is no consistent conduit for supporting parents and carers: most information is shared through schools (via parent newsletters or events) or through charities sought out by parents.

18. Within formal education, universal interventions that support media literacy in mental health have limited value and little supporting evidence.[9] The young people in our study (16-18 years old) preferred peer-to-peer learning that gave them agency rather than top-down delivery of content, such as awareness raising campaigns. Peer-led activities should be used to deliver media literacy for mental health within the PSHE Program of Study where possible.

19. Friends play a key role in supporting media literacy for mental health. Broadening social networks and providing peer-led support groups is a recognised need from the young people in our study.

Conclusion: Recommendations for action:

In line with the previous sections, this submission calls on the Government to:

1. Develop evidence-based peer-to-peer learning interventions to improve media literacy for delivery within the PSHE program of study and beyond

2. Ensure that the skills for digital emotional intelligence required for mental wellbeing are integrated within media literacy.

3. Draw on models of good practice from tech companies which support media literacy, such as TikTok’s STEM feed and Clinician Creator Network, but require tech companies to provide more stringent age verification measures for people to access sites, develop age-appropriate design and provide verification protocols for content creators who claim expertise in key areas of health communication.

4. Raise awareness of the resources available for parents and carers to upskill their own media literacy and support.

April 2025

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