MediaSmarts Blog - (Parents)

Instagram is a photography app that is used with a smart phone. You snap a photo, edit it, and then share it online with your network. The social networking part it is where the real appeal lies. There are loads of photo editing apps out there, but the social network attached to Instagram is what reels people in and what keeps people using it.

I feel like such an old lady when I’m listening to the radio sometimes. When I’m in the car with my husband we often find ourselves having the I Can’t Believe What Kids Are Listening to These Days conversation, one that often ends with me hitting the OFF button in disgust.

My name is Andrea Tomkins and I am the new MediaSmarts Mom. I am thrilled to be in this space and sharing my first post with you today.

The beginning of another school year is approaching quickly, and as it does many parents are beginning to wonder how they can help their kids ease out of summertime media habits. In addition to having to establish new rules for media use, parents may also face a barrage of requests and questions from their kids regarding digital technology, such as: Am I old enough to have a cell phone? Can I bring it to school? How about my iPod? What about Facebook -- all my friends are on it, I need it to talk to them about my homework!

Teachers who include media literacy in their classrooms often face issues that don’t arise in other subjects. Nothing illustrates this better than the issue of diversity in media. It’s not unreasonable for teachers to see the topic as a can of worms and be concerned about offending students and their parents – not to mention worrying about what the students themselves might say. At the same time, it’s a topic that is simply too important to be ignored: what we see in media hugely influences how we see others, ourselves and the world. As a result, an ability to analyze media depictions of diversity is not only a key element of being media literate, it’s essential to understanding many of the social issues and concerns that we face as citizens. That’s why Media Awareness Network has developed That’s Not Me – a new online tutorial for professional development to help educators and community leaders approach this issue through key concepts of media literacy.

Advertising: This is probably the most common revenue model on the Web. Most sites that deliver their content for free make their money through advertising, in the same way that commercials pay for TV shows. A lot of online advertising, like banner ads, is annoying but relatively easy to ignore. This can be a problem, though: some kinds of malware (programs that will harm your computer) pretend to be pop-up ads because they know most people close pop-ups without thinking about it. When you click what you think is the red "Close" button, though, you may actually be leading you to a dangerous Web site or giving the malware program permission to install itself on your computer. When you want to close a pop-up ad, let the cursor hover for a moment over the red "Close" button before clicking: if it looks like a hand instead of an arrow, don't click it -- close the whole tab to get rid of it. (Also, never click any box in a pop-up ad other than the red "Close" button, even if it says "close" or something similar.) Even legitimate ads, however, can use deception. Because many sites that host ads are paid for each time the ad is clicked, sites use a variety of tricks to get users to click through, such as misrepresenting the ad link as something else. The worst example of this is what's called typosquatting, in which advertisers register for Web addresses that are very similar to popular ones, in the hopes that you will type them by mistake; if you misspell Wikipedia.org as "Wikpedia," for instance, you might well land on a site advertising all manner of things; in many cases, typosquatting sites contain pornographic material or malware. The best way to prevent typosquatting is to establish Favorites or Bookmarks for children's preferred sites, so they will not have to type the Web address. In some browsers the Address bar can be removed altogether; while it's not possible in Internet Explorer 7, in Firefox it can be done by clicking on View in the top menu, then selecting Toolbars and unchecking Navigation Toolbar. This is easily undone, however, so it's only likely to be effective with younger children.