Media Literacy

1. Environmental or digital cues that activate craving or emotional dysregulation — social media is full of them
5. What social media platforms sell to advertisers — the longer you stay on, the more they earn
6. The reading strategy fact-checkers use — checking what OTHER sources say about a source before reading it deeply
9. An intentional limit on media consumption — one concrete, doable change to protect your recovery
12. The emotion most associated with viral spread of content — platforms amplify it because it drives engagement
15. The tendency of a media source to favor a particular perspective — worth knowing before trusting a source
16. False or misleading information — spreads six times faster than true information on social media
17. The ___ reel — the curated best moments people post, not their full reality
18. Intentional, healthy habits around what media you consume and how — applied to your digital life

2. The metric platforms optimize for — time spent, likes, shares, and comments, regardless of wellbeing
3. The process of checking whether a claim, image, or source is authentic and accurate
4. The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media — knowing how it's built to affect you
7. The automated system that decides what content you see — optimized for engagement, not accuracy or wellbeing
8. The social media pattern of measuring your insides against other people's highlight reels
10. The quality of being trustworthy and reliable — the first thing to check in any media source
11. The brain chemical targeted by social media variable reward design — the same system affected by substance use
13. The infinite design feature that keeps you on a platform without a natural stopping point
14. The four-step fact-checking framework: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims