Social Media Use and Adolescents’ Levels of Advertising Literacy

Advertising literacy is a set of knowledge, abilities and skills enabling one to identify and comprehend advertised messages. The theoretical part of the paper brings various points of view on advertising literacy (which we comprehend to be an element of media literacy), its classification and basic levels. The aim of the paper is to identify the level of advertising literacy among adolescents. The research has been conducted on a sample of 348 youngsters aged 13 to 17 years old. The authors of the paper investigated the influence of age on advertising literacy in the process of identifying intent of advertisement on the social network Instagram utilising new formats of digital communication such as reels, stories and memes. The authors of the paper tend to admit that the age of respondents may have an influence on adolescents’ advertising literacy but to finally claim so, further research with respondents from larger age groups would have to be conducted.