Helping kids authenticate information online
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
Do young people care about privacy? Participants in MediaSmarts’ 2012 focus groups told us that they valued their privacy highly, despite being enthusiastic participants in platforms and activities that adults see as being about nothing but sharing and broadcasting. Looking at the findings from our Young Canadians in a Wired World survey of more than five thousand students from every province and territory in Canada, we can begin to understand that contradiction: young people may not care that much about what we think of as privacy, but they care very much about control – control over who can see what they post, over who can track them digitally and, most especially, over how other people see them.
When we think about the privacy risks that youth face online, we tend to think in terms of teens and tweens oversharing on cell phones and social networks. Increasingly, though, children are facing privacy issues younger and younger: according to a 2014 study from the UK, kids aged 13-14 said they were eight and a half years old when they first went online, kids aged 11-12 said they were eight and kids aged nine to ten said they had gone online when they were just six years old.[1]
Whether it’s to prepare for the future job market or just to manage the lives they already lead online, young Canadians need to be digitally literate. But what exactly is digital literacy, and how can we ensure that all Canadian youth are learning the digital skills they need?
Despite their enthusiastic participation in social media, it’s a mistake to think that young people don’t care about privacy. MediaSmarts’ 2014 study Young Canadians in a Wired World, which surveyed over 5,000 students across Canada on their experiences with and attitudes towards digital media, found that they do have very strong feelings about their privacy, and take significant steps to control it.
This four-lesson unit on search skills and critical thinking teaches students how to target and specify their online searches to avoid unwanted results, how to judge whether a link, search result or website is legitimate or phony, and how to find legitimate sources online for media works such as music, videos and movies. In this lesson, students apply what they have learned in the first two lessons to find and verify information online.
Guest blog by Patricia Kosseim, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
This printable activity sheet introduces basic media literacy skills and concepts and is suitable for use in homes, schools and libraries. It can be completed independently, but children will learn more if you discuss the activity with them. Younger children may need help reading the instructions and completing the activity.