Media literacy is a dying skill, and we need to save it. While Gen Z may have been taught by our teachers in grade school to avoid Wikipedia when researching, that is about as far as many of us have received in terms of online media literacy education. 

California is now making strides to require media literacy lessons in K-12 public schools via Assembly Bill No. 873, which recently went into effect this school year. While this is great for current students in California public schools, 41 million members of Gen Z are eligible to vote in the 2024 election: a cohort that has no standards for what media literacy means because the internet was developing in their youth. 

In an effort to bridge this gap, USC should adapt its general education requirements to emphasize online media literacy besides databases. Much in the same way many GE courses teach us how to approach historical primary and secondary sources, the curriculum should take into account the impact of the internet, social media, artificial intelligence and anything else that could perpetrate misinformation.

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Among Gen Z Americans, half report using social media as their daily source for news, per an August 2022 Statista survey. Twenty-three percent of Gen Z says they turn to streaming services. Only 9% of respondents said they look to local or national newspapers, which follow traditional journalistic standards, such as fact-checking, that social media platforms and streaming services may not require. 

This poses a real issue for Gen Z because we have turned to social media platforms, which are not inherently dishonest, but often allow dishonest or misleading news to be spread. As a whole, we are not turning to traditional sources for our news because social media, in theory, is a more accessible way to receive information — yet many of us are not always aware whether we are given the full story, part of the story or something completely untrue. 

Perhaps the biggest perpetrator of misleading news on social media today is Elon Musk’s social platform X. On X, there is little in the way of you saying exactly what you want, no matter how untrue you know or do not know it is. In fact, a June 2024 study by the European Commission found that X held the largest proportion of disinformation among all major social media platforms. 

Musk is a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” allowing almost any kind of speech on the platform, including hate speech. Still, Musk does not seem to comprehend that free speech is not meant to be absolute; the Supreme Court famously said in the landmark case Schenck v. United States that “free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” I have reason to believe that Musk would campaign in favor of Schenck.

This absolutism has allowed for a platform full of false or misleading information to spread like wildfire. And while only about one in three Gen Zers use X, this statistic does not account for the number of times a post may be screenshotted and reposted on another platform or texted to a friend. This poses a real issue when the election is less than two weeks away, and misinformation is not fact-checked on a wide enough scale on the platform. 

Laura Loomer is one of the most prominent right-wing influencers on X, with over 1.3 million followers. Loomer has consistently spread unfounded claims such as “Haitian invaders” — as she deems Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — eating people’s dogs. 

Per her X bio, she is an “investigative journalist,” though she seems to have forgotten all of her journalistic integrity by using a TikTok video as her sole evidence, even though Springfield officials have repeatedly clarified these claims are baseless. 

Though these claims may seem nonsensical to many of us, there is a fair chance you have fallen victim to a misleading or untrue headline. And while fact-checking is often a straightforward task, there is a reason it is being implemented into the California public school curriculum. Not enough people know how to do it. 

As a private institution, USC can decide what should and should not be required in their general education courses. As it stands, GE-A, GE-B and GE-H all require students to examine primary sources and often include lessons on approaching those sources. 

The issue now is that everything from Laura Loomer’s conspiracy theorist X posts to a breaking news article from CNN’s website are considered primary sources. By incorporating modern media literacy education into USC’s general education curriculum, the University can play a small part in creating a better, more adept society.