Digital Literacy 101 For Teachers
How can teachers equip their students to successfully and ethically navigate the digital world?
Cyber Security Consumer Tip Sheet: Mobile Devices
As well as invaluable tools for keeping in touch with our friends, families and our work, mobile devices have become an increasingly big part of how we access the Internet. Unfortunately, while many smartphones are nearly as powerful as computers, we often don’t use the same caution with them as we do with our computers—and they often don’t have the privacy and security safeguards that come built into computers.
Helping Kids Make an Impact When They Witness Cyberbullying
In 2015, MediaSmarts and PREVNet conducted a study of Canadian students – funded by TELUS – to find out how to give youth better advice and support when they witness cyberbullying. That research, Young Canadians' Experiences with Online Bullying, aimed to discover three things: what are the barriers to witness intervention in cyberbullying? What incentives can increase the likelihood of witness intervention? And which interventions are more or less likely to have a positive outcome?
Strategies for Fighting Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is everyone’s business and the best response is a pro-active or preventative one. From the outset, we can reduce the risks associated with internet use if we engage in an open discussion with our children about their online activities and set up rules that will grow along with them. Cyberbullying is strongly connected with moral disengagement – the ways we can fool ourselves into thinking it’s all right to do something we know is wrong or to not do something we know is right – so activating kids’ empathy and moral judgment is a key aspect of preventing both offline and online bullying.
Building Better Tech Habits: A Guide to Digital Well-being
Screen time is one of parents’ top tech-related concerns, according to MediaSmarts’ research, and it’s the most common source of tech-related conflict between parents and young people in Canada. Kids are worried about their screen use too: almost half say they spend too much time on their phones.
I’m overwhelmed online. Now what?
I probably could, and maybe should, write about all of the social media changes we are seeing. The troubling updates to Meta’s content moderation policies and the removal of their fact-checking program, the complicated TikTok ban in the US, all of it.
Helping kids get a healthy start with phones
Phones 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.