Managing media with teens
While they’re not going through as much development as tweens, moving to high school at the beginning of this stage – and moving out of it at the end – can be stressful.
Managing media with tweens (10-13 years old)
Helping Kids Build Safe and Smart Digital Habits
There are four main strategies to help kids become resilient to online risks. We can:
Curate our kids’ media experiences;
Control who can access our kids and their data;
Co-view media with our kids;
and be our kids’ media Coaches.
DigitalSmarts
Digital literacy is a vital tool for education, employment and economic participation, civic engagement, and even health and wellness. It reinforces existing inequalities based on socioeconomic status, ethnicity, education, immigration status and gender. Given the importance of digital literacy skills to under-represented populations, MediaSmarts and YWCA Canada have partnered to develop and deliver DigitalSmarts, a digital literacy skills program.
Reality Check: The Game
On the internet, it can be hard to tell what’s true and what’s false—but we have to make a lot of decisions based on how reliable we think things are. In Reality Check, you’ll learn how to find clues like finding where a story originally came from and comparing it to other sources, as well as how to use tools like fact-checking sites and reverse image searches.
Introducing AI
In this lesson, students learn that AI tools are computer programs that follow patterns instead of thinking like humans. They explore how this can lead AIs to make mistakes and importance of having humans supervise and correct them. Students practice creating “robot rules” and then design a "Trashbot" that will recognize and pick up trash in the classroom.
Where do we get information about health and science?
While many of us strongly prefer online sources when seeking out health and science information, a majority first encounter health or science stories through traditional news outlets.
Four Steps to Getting Better Political and Election News
Broaden your news diet. Probably the most important thing you can do is make sure that you’re not only getting news that confirms what you already believe. At the same time, it’s important not to “overcorrect” and seek out sources that have a totally opposite bias from yours, which will almost certainly just make you angry and reinforce your current opinions. Instead, find sources from a more moderate, different point of view.
Break the Fake Tip #2: Find the source
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.
Break the Fake: What’s in the frame?
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.
Reporting Platforms and Changing the Vibe
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.