Talking to your kids about sexting
Sexting is most likely to have negative consequences when the person sending the sext has been pressured into doing it.
Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age
There’s a long-standing relationship between sex and the Internet. As far as back the 1980s, Usenet and local bulletin board systems were used to share pornographic text files and crude (in both senses) graphics, and people have been using digital media to form and carry out online relationships at least as long. However, just as estimates of how much online traffic and content is made up of sexual material tend to be exaggerated[1], our new report – Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age – from MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wired World survey of 5,436 students, shows that for Canadian youth, sexuality and romantic relationships play a fairly small part of their online lives.
Facing Online Hate
The Facing Online Hate tutorial examines how the Internet is used to spread and incite hate – and how parents, community leaders and educators can respond. The first part of the tutorial provides an overview of hate and prejudice online and how it can radicalize young people and have a negative impact on both online and offline communities. The second part covers how teachers and parents can prepare young people to recognize online hate, to respond and to push back when they see it.
Dinner table talk about passwords
In my previous post I briefly mentioned the issue of passwords. The topic of passwords may not be as top-of-mind as sexting or bullying, but it’s important, and it definitely deserves some attention at home. Consider this the next topic for your dinnertime conversation.
Encountering Racist and Sexist Content Online
Bigotry, in its various forms, has been with us for a long time – at least since the Greeks coined the word “barbarian” to mean “anyone who isn’t us,” and likely longer – so it’s not surprising that racism, sexism and other prejudices have found a home on the Internet. MediaSmarts’ new report Young Canadians in a Wired World: Encountering Racist and Sexist Content Online looks at how often Canadian youth are exposed to prejudice, how it makes them feel and how they respond to it.
Talking to your kids about pornography
It is natural for adolescents to be curious about sex: MediaSmarts’ research suggests that one in six grade 7- 11 students use the Internet to look for information about sexual health. Twenty percent of kids that age look for pornography online, but a third see it without looking for it — and close to half take steps to keep from seeing it.