The #So.Me team submitted evidence as part of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee Media Literacy Inquiry in April 2025.

The inquiry sought to establish a clear vision for what good media literacy would look like in the UK, and examine the barriers to achieving this vision. The Committee considered the roles and responsibilities of the Government, industry and regulators in advancing media literacy, and aimed to identify and prioritise the key actions required to enhance media literacy skills across the population.

What did our evidence say?

The key points we raised related to:

• The inadequacy of formal education: Formal education has a key role to play in helping young people to make sense of and navigate their daily online experiences. However, currently, there is a narrow focus in educational settings on the most high-risk or extreme experiences young people might have on social media. This neglects the more subtle every challenges that most young people must navigate on a daily basis, and there needs more structured time and space to explore and discuss these.

• Supporting teachers and parents: Key adults do not currently feel equipped to support young people across the breadth of challenges that social media can pose. There is a need for appropriate up-to-date media literacy resources that meet the needs of young people and supporting adults.

• Discussions around social media need to be balanced: Initiatives to support young people with their social media literacy will only be productive if we adopt a more balanced approach that does not assume social media inherently negative, and matches young people’s needs in thinking about how they navigate and act as discerning consumers on social media.

You can read our full evidence submission here, which was included in the final report into Media Literacy references our evidence.

The key recommendations from the report are as follows:

• Embed media literacy across the national curriculum: The ongoing curriculum and assessment review should be used to embed effective media literacy education across the curriculum in schools, with teaching starting from the early years phase. The Committee also calls for initial teacher training and continuous professional development to be updated to incorporate media literacy, to ensure teachers feel better equipped to deliver lessons on this vital

• Raise public awareness and target new support for adults: A new public awareness campaign with simple messaging is needed to boost understanding of the importance of media literacy. This must be accompanied by clear signposting to further resources, sustained year-long media literacy activity, and support for local delivery partners such as libraries.

• Address the leadership vacuum on media literacy: The Government must appoint a specific senior minister to lead delivery across Whitehall by coordinating cross-departmental activity within education, public services and local government.

• Demand more from platforms: Tech companies should be subject to a new levy to fund sustainable, independent media literacy initiatives. Further to this, Ofcom should set out minimum standards for platforms’ on-platform media literacy activity and use its wider powers to understand how effective these activities are.

  You can read the Committee's report in full, alongside their suggested recommendations for policymakers, here.