The Impact of Media Dependence and Critical Thinking on College Students’ Media Literacy and Satisfaction: Evidence Based on SEM

With the popularization of digital media in higher education, improving college students’ media literacy and satisfaction has become an important goal of education reform. Based on 1,091 questionnaire survey data from Shandong universities in China, this paper systematically explores the impact mechanism of media dependence and critical thinking on college students’ media literacy and media satisfaction using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results show that: (1) both media dependence and critical thinking positively predict media literacy, among which critical thinking has a more significant effect; (2) media literacy has a significant positive impact on media satisfaction, and plays a partial mediating role in the path between media dependence and critical thinking and satisfaction; (3) multi-group analysis shows that the model is structurally stable across gender, grade and other groups. This study expands the theory of media literacy, emphasizes the importance of critical thinking education, and provides empirical evidence for the construction of media literacy courses and the formulation of education policies in colleges and universities.