Cyberbullying and the Law
Cyberbullying can be addressed under civil law or criminal law, based on the situation.
Cyberbullying can be addressed under civil law or criminal law, based on the situation.
Given their increasing use of the Internet to find information, now is also a good time to introduce strategies for determining authorship and authority of online information so they can recognize good health information, biased or hateful content, and online scams and hoaxes.
At this age media influences on gender norms and body image are becoming more intense. Children need to learn to apply key media literacy concepts to online spaces such as social networks.
"Given the opportunity, young people do care about issues relating to the harnessing and use of their information online. They want to know what information is being taken from them, and why. They want companies to be more open about how data is being used."
Online hate can have an impact in three interconnected ways:
Although many concerns remain about how gender represented in media, there are signs that things are changing. Roles for women on television, in particular, have become much more varied and complex in the last decade, ranging from the conflicted Star Wars hero Ahsoka to Marvel characters such as Echo and Ms. Marvel to more realistic characters like Never Have I Ever’s Devi, while a growing number of movies and TV shows are questioning narrow definitions of masculinity.
Contrary to stereotypes, youth do care about their privacy.
Contrary to popular belief, cyberbullying remains a problem in high school. Students in these grades should learn the ways that they can speak out and make a difference, both in cases of individual cyberbullying and in building more tolerant and respectful online spaces.
This lesson introduces students to the ways in which commercial apps and websites collect personal information from kids and to the issues surrounding children and privacy on the Internet. Students begin by considering how comfortable they would be with people knowing various things about them, and then watch and discuss a video which explains how targeted advertising works. They then explore the idea of targeted advertising through a class exercise in which Prince Charming tries to target Cinderella with an ad for glass slippers, and then analyze how their own personal information might be used to target them with ads. In the second part of the lesson, students are introduced to privacy policies and how they are rated by the website Terms of Service, Didn’t Read. They read and analyze the site’s rating for a popular app and then learn ways to limit data collection. In an extension activity, students are introduced to the idea of “dark patterns” and imagine how the Wicked Queen might use them to convince Snow White to accept “poison” cookies.