To better understand the digital skills young Canadians need as citizens and workers in the digital age, MediaSmarts and the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) are hosting a National Digital Youth Summit to hear directly from Canadian students on this topic.
It’s Media Literacy Week! This is actually the tenth annual Media Literacy Week, which runs November 2-6. If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you already have a good handle on what media literacy is all about.
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.
One of the biggest changes in our understanding of bullying over the past few years has been our increased awareness of the important role that witnesses, or bystanders, play in any bullying situation. Research on offline bullying has shown that witnesses can be just as important as targets or perpetrators in determining how a bullying scenario plays out. This is especially relevant in the case of electronic bullying, where witnesses have many more choices in how they might engage: they can choose to be invisible, to join in anonymously, to re-victimize someone by forwarding bullying material – or they can choose to intervene, to offer support to the person being targeted and to bear witness to what they have seen
Did you know? Two-thirds of Canadian students have helped someone who was being picked on online.
When you see or hear bad things happening online, you have a lot of power to make things better – or worse. Sometimes it’s hard to know the right thing to do, so ask yourself these questions:
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.
MediaSmarts asked Canadian teens attending a Digital Youth Summit what they do to make the online world better for everyone. Here’s what they said:
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.
Today is Pink Shirt Day, a national initiative to end bullying both offline and online. Since 2007, Canadians have been donning pink shirts to show their commitment to ending bullying in all forms.
March 8 is designated around the world as International Women’s Day, a day for recognizing women’s achievements, as well as the inequities that women face. This year, the United Nations’ theme is Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality, focusing on the UN’s 2030 Agenda. The theme for Status of Women Canada – #YouAreEmpowerment – is also about working towards gender equality.