Withholding screens as punishment

What parents need to know about tech and sleep

While tech has become integrated in the lives of parents and teens, there are positives and negatives that come with it. One problem? When our handheld devices affect our sleep – and this is a particular issue for teens.

Cyber Choices (Grades 3-5)

Cyber Choices is an interactive game designed to help students in grades 3 to 5 develop the skills and habits they need to make safe and responsible choices online. Cyber Choices lets students explore four different stories that cover key issues such as making good choices about their own and others’ personal information, dealing with cyberbullying (as both a target and a witness) and managing online conflict. 

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.

Raising Digitally Resilient Kids

The Raising Digitally Resilient Kids parent workshop outlines how parents and guardians can support children’s well-being and help them balance the risks and benefits of digital media. Based on insights from MediaSmarts’ research with youth, the workshop provides an overview of online risk categories and provides resources and essential strategies that participants can take to manage these risks.

Media Safety Tips: Middle Childhood (6-9 years old)

Media risks

The risks that kids encounter in media fall into four categories:

Content risks, where kids are exposed to or engage with harmful content such as violence, hate, or sexualized media; 

Conduct risks that come from what kids do or how they interact with other users; 

Consumer risks related to money, advertising, and data collection; 

Media Safety Tips: Teens

Two important ideas relating to teens are the imaginary audience and the personal fable. The imaginary audience makes them overestimate how much attention other people are paying to them. This makes them more self-conscious and leads them to think of privacy primarily in terms of impression management – trying to control how others see them. The personal fable makes teens see themselves as the main character of a story and, as a result, leads many to believe that bad things will simply not happen to them. 

Media Safety Tips: Tweens (10-13 years old)

Media risks

The risks that kids encounter in media fall into four categories:

Content risks, where kids are exposed to or engage with harmful content such as violence, hate, or sexualized media; 

Conduct risks that come from what kids do or how they interact with other users; 

Consumer risks related to money, advertising, and data collection; 

Defeating Distraction

Here are some tips to develop a healthier relationship with technology:

Escaping the Comparison Trap

This tip sheet will give you some tips for building a healthier relationship with social media so you can avoid the comparison trap and feel better about yourself online.

Understand How the 'Comparison Trap' Works

Here are a few things about social media that make us more likely to compare ourselves to others: