Among Pakistani adults who use media every day, only 41% could spot biased or misleading news — and education was the clearest correlate

Pakistan has more than 100 private TV channels and over 87 million social media users, and misinformation and political polarisation have grown with them, while media literacy work so far has focused on young people and students. This study asks how media-literate adults across the country are, and how education, age, gender and access to technology relate to it.

A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. First, a face-to-face survey of 500 adults aged 18 and over across the four provinces in proportion to population (Punjab 200, Sindh 125, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 100, Balochistan 75), each resident in the province for at least five years and using media at least an hour a day, in March–April 2025. The 35-item questionnaire was adapted from the European Media Literacy Index and piloted with 50 adults (α = 0.82). The sample was 58% men and 42% women, 52% rural, 62% with at least secondary education, and only 28% using the internet daily. Then 30 in-depth interviews drawn from the same respondents — 15 urban and 15 rural, spanning high, middle and low scorers — in May–June 2025, in Urdu, Sindhi and Pashto; rural women were interviewed by female enumerators.

• Only 41% could correctly identify biased or misleading news, and urban respondents scored 22% higher than rural ones on this.
• 18% had ever created or shared original content of their own, and only 33% understood privacy settings on social media.
• Education correlated clearly and positively with media literacy (r = 0.62, p < .01). Age correlated negatively with digital skills (r = −0.54, p < .05): younger people handled the tools better, though the authors note they often lacked critical discernment about content.
• The interviews raised three themes: distrust of mainstream television as politically biased and sensational, with a turn to YouTube commentators and WhatsApp groups instead; a generational gap, with older people watching TV and listening to radio largely without questioning it while younger people spend all day on social media but cannot judge whether content is credible; and, in rural areas, many women could reach a smartphone or the internet only through male relatives.

For anyone running media literacy programmes, the finding is that using media fluently and evaluating it are different skills: young people are adept with the tools yet still believe what they read, and losing trust in television is not the same as knowing how to check information. The authors call for reaching adults through non-formal channels, workplaces and communities, not only schools and universities — and any programme meant to reach rural women has to be designed knowing the device may be in someone else's hands.