Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

Discussion paper English Français Deutsch Italiano 中文 More Despite unprecedented access to information in the digital age, young citizens face growing challenges related to news consumption and misinformation. This large-scale randomized controlled trial examines the impact of two complementary interventions designed to foster media literacy and the consumption of high-quality news among high-school students, implemented in France over the 2024-25 academic year. The study involves 243 high schools (for a total number of 9,628 students), randomly assigned to a control group or to receive one or both of the following interventions: (i) a one-year free digital subscription to the leading national newspaper, and (ii) media education modules implemented by teachers. Exploiting unique data on students' actual online news consumption, we document a very large uptake of the free subscription, which translates into persistent and large increases in news consumption (+0.49 to 0.60 sd) and demand for future news, including an 8pp increase in paid subscriptions nearly a year after the intervention. We also observe a 0.20 to 0.31 sd increase in news knowledge for students enrolled in deprived schools, reducing baseline information inequality by 45-70%. Finally, we show that both free news access and media education improve media literacy skills (+0.08 to 0.26 sd), with larger effects among students taught by teachers with prior experience in media education. Translation created by Artificial Intelligence (LLM)