Communicating Safely Online: Tip Sheet for Parents and Trusted Adults
a. Types of Unhealthy Online Relationships
Online exploitation is when someone uses digital media to find teens and get them involved in romantic or sexual relationships.
Online exploitation is when someone uses digital media to find teens and get them involved in romantic or sexual relationships.
Few issues capture our anxiety about young people and digital media so perfectly as sexting. As with technologies at least as far back as the telegraph, much of this anxiety has focused specifically on girls and women.
As a kid, did you ever hide a flashlight under your pillow? Then pull it out after you were supposed to be asleep, so you could sneak in another half-hour of reading?
I did that. A lot.
We have a few smartphone rules in our house: no phones after 9:30 p.m., no phones at the dinner table or other family events, and no phones in bedrooms.
The Digital Literacy Training Program for Canadian Educators workshop provides an overview of essential digital literacy skills and key concepts of media and digital literacy, familiarizes participants with the digital experiences of Canadian youth, and introduces the resources and tools that are available through MediaSmarts’ USE, UNDERSTAND & CREATE digital literacy framework.
How can teachers equip their students to successfully and ethically navigate the digital world?
My teens are still young and new to social media, so until now, we’ve mostly been focusing on the risks. Our main message to them has been to be careful, and that less time online is always better.
When Marlene Kane's sixteen-year-old son Andrew asked her to drive him to the nearby town of Midland last December, she was surprised to hear that he wanted to meet with someone he had met while playing the online game World of Warcraft – and even more surprised to learn that the person he was meeting was a 42-year-old mother of four from Texas. Experts on sexual solicitation of youth online were less shocked however. In fact, for them the only surprising thing was Lauri Price's sex. Everything else about the scenario – how they made contact, Price's openness about her age, Andrew's willingness to meet her, and the lack of deception about her intentions – all fit the evolving picture of how youth are sexually exploited online.