Buy Nothing Day, Friday, November 23, is an annual event that is observed the day after American Thanksgiving, which is considered the busiest shopping day of the year and the start of the Christmas shopping season. The purpose of Buy Nothing Day is to make people think about the role of shopping, and more broadly consuming, in our culture. Check out MediaSmarts’ lesson on Buy Nothing Day (Grades 7-12), which uses the day as a jumping-off point to look at the role of consumerism in our lives and culture.

Getting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube: A Lesson on Online Information (Grades 6-8) In this lesson, students watch a short video that compares getting rid of personal information online to getting toothpaste back into a tube. Through the video and a series of short scenarios, students learn the five principles of information online: that information online is permanent, can be copied, can be seen by unintended audiences, can be seen by larger audiences than intended, and that it becomes searchable.