With the rapid explosion of electronic tools to broadcast information, market ideas and products, track, interact and partner with strangers, encourage mass sharing of personal information and pictures, and allow anonymous, yet intimate involvement in the lives of others, requires youth to develop skills and tools that have evolved to include both media and digital literacy.

The 2021 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) reported that 91% of students in grades 7-12 use social media daily. Of these students 31% of them are spending 5 hours or more on social media daily.  Students using high levels of social media also report significantly higher rates of fair/poor mental health, psychological distress, suicidal ideation, and being cyber-bullied. Roughly one-third of students report being cyberbullied at least once in the past year (OSDHUS 2021).

MediaSmarts, a Canadian non-profit organization for digital and media literacy describes the competencies for digital literacy and media literacy as complementary and mutually supporting and constantly evolving and intersecting in new and interesting way. It defines the supporting role each plays as “media literacy generally focuses on teaching youth to be critically engaged consumers of media, while digital literacy is more about enabling youth to participate in digital media in wise, safe and ethical ways."