How Young Canadians Get Their Online Media
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.
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.
I had a really interesting conversation with my 14-year-old daughter recently. She was wondering why so many adults assume that teenagers are all the same: a bunch of lazy, self-involved jokers who are glued to their devices all day. I didn’t have an answer for her, really, only that people tend to generalize, and that this is Never a Good Thing, no matter who it is we’re talking about.
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.
Lessons on Cyberbullying for Grades 5-12
The Internet has created a whole new world of social communications for young people who are using e-mail, social networking Web sites, instant messaging, chat rooms and text messaging to stay in touch with friends and make new ones.
In this lesson, students watch a video introducing the media literacy key concept that media are constructions. They then explore this concept by considering a pair of cereal boxes and identifying the different elements of the box and the purposes they serve. In an optional final task, students pick a target audience and create their own cereal box to appeal to that audience.
In this lesson, students watch a video introducing the media literacy key concept that audiences negotiate meaning.
In this lesson, students watch a video introducing the media literacy key concept that media have commercial implications.
In this lesson, students watch a video introducing the media literacy key concept that media have social and political implications.
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.