Media and information literacy among children on three continents: insights into the measurement and mediation of well-being

In understanding and promoting positive outcomes for children’s internet use, media and information literacies play a crucial mediating role, by enabling opportunities to learn, create, express oneself and participate, and by facilitating coping and building resilience. This chapter explains the approach taken by Global Kids Online (GKO), a multinational research partnership seeking to generate robust evidence that can inform policy and practice regarding children’s internet use in diverse cities and countries internationally. The chapter presents the rationale for GKO’s multidimensional approach to media and information literacy, and issues of measurement, social desirability and cross-national comparison. It shows recent findings showing cross-national similarities in higher levels of operational than creative skills as well as differences between higher and lower income countries; it is noteworthy that gender differences in children’s digital skills are found to be small. Having shown that the GKO quantitative research toolkit successfully operationalises the range of media and information literacies also addressed by comparable international frameworks, we commend it to future researchers, concluding with evidence that the results of the GKO research are now being used to inform national policy and practice regarding children’s learning in a digital age.