The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a new policy statement, Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents, that represents a significant shift in how the medical community views screen time. Instead of fixating on minutes and hours, they’re finally acknowledging what those of us in the digital and media literacy community have been shouting from the rooftops for years: It’s not just about how much time kids spend on screens, but about preparing them for the entire media ecosystem they’re navigating.

According to the AAP, this “digital ecosystem” encompasses all sorts of digital media, including television, the internet, social media, video games, and interactive assistants.

With this ecosystem in mind, recent restrictive measures that focus solely on keeping kids off social media until age 16, banning smartphones from classrooms, or counting the minutes spent watching TV are woefully incomplete. They fail to prepare youth for the entire system they will interact with one way or another—if not now, then when they’re older (if they want to get a job or communicate with, say, anybody). They need more than just limits or restrictions to be ready for it.

According to the AAP, that something includes education.

The Education Gap Nobody’s Talking About

Around the same time that the AAP issued its statement, the nonprofit organization Media Literacy Now issued its U.S. Media Literacy Policy & Impact Report. Together, these two reports paint a sobering picture of how we are failing to adequately prepare students.

While the AAP urges schools to include digital literacy instruction, the MLN report finds that even after decades of research and mounting evidence about the challenges kids face online, only half of U.S. states have taken any legislative action on media literacy education. And many of those actions fall far short of actually requiring comprehensive instruction.

“Media literacy,” according to MLN, is “the large umbrella that covers specific skills and concepts like news literacy, information literacy, digital literacy, digital wellness, social media literacy, digital citizenship, and most recently, AI literacy.” In short, it prepares students to successfully navigate the digital ecosystem referenced above.

Consider these sobering statistics from the MLN report:

57 percent of all online content is now AI-generated, with estimates that this will reach 90 percent by 2026.
41 percent of teens report encountering misleading content online.
15 percent of students personally know a victim of non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated deepfakes.

And this is in the bucket of all the digital challenges that await unprepared youth. Algorithms shape their worldview in ways they can’t see; digital footprints have real-world consequences; relationships are being forged with AI chatbots; and misinformation is getting harder and harder to detect.

Slow Progress

While Media Literacy Now should be lauded for their painstaking work, it’s disheartening to learn that half of the country still hasn’t passed any media literacy legislation at all.

And even within those states of success, the commitment to education is often vague. Hawaii, for example, “passed a resolution requesting the Board of Education to consider media literacy programs and curriculum for implementation,” while Louisiana “passed a resolution to urge and request the Department of Education, the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Board of Regents, and postsecondary education management boards to promote AI education.”

Additionally, commitment by other states is sparse—maybe just one unit in high school, or only about social media safety, or a requirement buried within another subject area where an already overwhelmed teacher is expected to somehow fit it in. Sure, these are steps in the right direction, but they’re standalone requirements, not integrated into comprehensive digital or media literacy instruction across grade levels and subject areas.

Education Essential Reads

Even in states that have passed legislation, implementation is often weak. Teachers aren’t trained, or the curriculum isn’t provided. Without those supports, students won’t be adequately prepared for the world they’re actually living in. And the longer we delay, the wider that gap becomes, as digital media becomes more sophisticated, more manipulative, more difficult to navigate without explicit instruction.

What Next?

We need to stop treating media and digital literacy as optional. It’s time to treat it with the same urgency as we do reading, writing, and arithmetic (before the AI tools start doing all that for us, too). It is too important to be an add-on or a nice-to-have; it is a fundamental literacy for the 21st century.

The research is clear. Frameworks exist. The need is urgent and growing. What we lack is the collective commitment to actually do something about it.

For Parents Still Worried About Screen Time

By all means, have conversations with your kids about their screen time. It’s still important. But also demand more from your schools, your legislators, your state board of education. Our individual efforts as parents, no matter how well-intentioned, can’t substitute for the comprehensive education that all kids deserve.

The digital ecosystem isn’t going anywhere. It’s only becoming more complex, more immersive, more integral to every aspect of life. We can’t keep fixating on screen time limits and phone bans, measuring minutes and fighting over devices in classrooms. The real challenge is preparing young people to navigate this ecosystem thoughtfully, critically, safely, and ethically.

That preparation requires education: systematic, comprehensive, developmentally appropriate education that starts early and scaffolds skills over time.

The AAP has shifted the conversation. Media Literacy Now has documented the gaps. Now it’s time for policymakers, educators, and communities to close them.