Screens and other media are a big part of kids’ lives, and they can be a healthy part too. Here are some ways that you can make sure your kids get the best possible start when using media and digital devices.
Children under two should spend as little time with screen devices as possible, except for video-chats with people they know offline and reading e-books with an adult or sibling.
In this lesson, students will learn about algorithms and how they function, particularly recommendation algorithms utilized by popular apps like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Netflix. Students explore the role of optimization goals such as watch time, engagement, and daily active use in shaping the content algorithms prioritize. Through activities like “red teaming,” students will critically analyze the potential downsides and biases of these optimization goals. Students will also discover how to train algorithms by providing both explicit inputs through actions like liking and sharing, and understand the implications of implicit inputs gathered from their online activity. Finally, students design their own algorithm for an app of their choice, identifying which goals it should be optimized for and how they should be weighted as well as what inputs it should use.
You can train the algorithms on social networks and video sites to show you more of what you want, and less of what you don’t want. Here are some tips:
Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker article “Small Change” has set the blogosphere buzzing with its strongly stated argument that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter will not usher in a new age of social activism, as some digital evangelists have proposed, but that they and the relationships they foster are actually detrimental to real social change. As Gladwell puts it, "The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo."
Because it’s so easy to copy and share things online, it’s important to find out where something originally came from before you decide whether or not to trust it. Someone might have shared it with you on social media, or a news story might be based on someone else’s story.
In this lesson, students are introduced to the idea that what they see in media can be deceptive. They explore the idea that media are “framed” by their creators and consider what parts of the world are left out of the frame.
Today is Safer Internet Day 2016(February 9), and the theme is “play your part for a better internet”. To help you play your part, we’d like to share a new tip sheet by and for Canadian youths on how to make the Internet safer and better for everyone.
TV, music and movies have been a central part of young people’s lives for generations, and the Internet has only intensified that by delivering all of those directly to our homes – legally and illegally.
Written by Dr. Samantha McAleese
Here at MediaSmarts, we’ve just wrapped up another research project called Reporting Platforms: Young Canadians Evaluate Efforts to Counter Disinformation. This project created space for youth from across Canada to examine and assess reporting processes on popular social media apps (like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube). We wanted to learn more about how young people feel about current efforts to counter misinformation and disinformation and what solutions they might have to address this particular online harm. To do this, we facilitated three focus groups with 36 participants ages 16 to 29, talked to them about how often they see misinformation and disinformation online and what they do about it, and asked them to comment on whether they trust platforms to keep them safe and informed while scrolling and sharing.