Cyberbullying Overview
For most youth, the internet is all about socializing, and while most of these social interactions are positive, some use the technology to intimidate and harass others – a phenomenon known as cyberbullying.
For most youth, the internet is all about socializing, and while most of these social interactions are positive, some use the technology to intimidate and harass others – a phenomenon known as cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying can be addressed under civil law or criminal law, based on the situation.
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.
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.
In this lesson students learn the ways that the apps they use are designed to encourage them to share more information—both with other users and with the apps themselves. They are then introduced to the idea of persuasive design or “dark patterns” and investigate whether these are used to make it more difficult to opt out of data collection on popular apps. Finally, the class creates a “rogues’ gallery” to help them identify dark patterns when they encounter them.
Here are four quick and easy steps to find out the truth and share good information. Sometimes you only have to do one of these things, and most steps take less than a minute.
Sometimes a single search can break the fake, if a professional fact-checker like Snopes has already done the work for you.
What we see – and don’t see – in media affects how we view reality. Media works can be imagined either as mirrors that reflect an audience’s own experience, windows that give them access to experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have known, or in some cases both.
Think you know how to read and understand privacy policies and terms of use? Learn how to make sense of legal documents for websites and apps with this interactive game.