Media literacy will be one of the keys to success in the future
Parents need to talk to their children about media literacy not only to protect them from being deceived online, but also because as adults they will live surrounded by smart devices, and will inhabit virtual spaces – notes futurologist Árpád Rab in the final episode of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority’s (NMHH) podcast series on deepfakes. The other expert guest on the show, media literacy specialist Veronika Pelle, draws attention to the importance of the values instilled in children at home.
Increasingly it is the “human code”, i.e. background knowledge, contextualisation, and the capacity for critical thinking that will serve as the tool of media literacy in the future, while the importance of surveillance software will increasingly recede into the background, says futurologist and digital culture expert Árpád Rab in the fifth and final episode of the NMHH Podcast series on deepfakes. He also warns us, however, that deepfakes are, by definition, a bad thing – it contains the word “fake”, after all – and only human intelligence is capable of detecting malicious fakes. “There is nothing wrong with the technology itself,” notes Árpád Rab. “It's wonderful that we can make films, present the world or express our creativity more easily. But if our aim is to humiliate, compromise, or mock someone, that is wrong. It is important to understand the human intent behind the act. However, that is a job for humans, not machines.”
Veronika Pelle, the NMHH’s media literacy expert, stresses the role of values brought from home. In her view, whether a child participates in cyberbullying, joins in with the bullies, stays silent, or stands up for his or her peer, usually does not come down to the child’s spontaneous reaction in the moment. “Children who bring basic human values from home, who have been brought up not to hurt others, or who understand the golden rule of ethics – do unto others as you would have them to unto you – are far more likely to uphold those principles in online situations as well,” says Veronika Pelle.
The podcast also revealed that according to NMHH research, the majority of children will own at least one smart device by the age of 10, and as many as 7% of kindergarten children already have one. Children are signing up on social media platforms at ever younger ages: a third of 7–12-year-olds are already using them, even though they are officially not allowed to do so. In Hungarian families, parents spend an average of just 6–7 minutes a day talking to their children. This is not even enough to cover what happened at school every day, let alone discuss the online world and media use. So while we are putting smart devices in children’s hands, we are not preparing them to use them properly – it is like letting them drive a car in traffic without a driving licence, or without knowing the Highway Code.
Previous episodes of the NMHH deepfake podcast series have explored the entertaining and dangerous sides of deepfake technology from a variety of perspectives.
All episodes of the series are available on the National Media and Communications Authority’s YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts channels.