Co-Viewing With Your Kids

One of the most important things you can do to raise media-savvy kids is what’s called shared media engagement. That includes listening to their music, watching TV, movies and videos together, getting to know their favourite apps and playing the games they enjoy. It also includes talking to them about their media lives: what they like, what they’re excited about or looking forward to, and what worries or annoys them. While just being with them is an important step, this is also a great opportunity to help your kids think critically about the media they consume, by asking them questions about it and, sometimes, answering back.

Think Before You Share

We always hear that sharing is a good thing. And thanks to technology, we can share our ideas, opinions, pictures and videos with our friends and other people we choose to share it with. Most of the time, sharing is good. But if we aren’t thoughtful about how we share, we run the risk of hurting ourselves or someone else. Also, remember that the things you share with your friends can end up being shared with others. That’s why it’s important to think before you share.

Making Your Voice Heard: A Media Toolkit for Youth

Making Your Voice Heard: A Media Toolkit for Youth is designed to help young people understand how the news industry works, why youth stereotyping happens and how they can access media to get positive youth voices and stories heard.

Think Before You Share for Safer Internet Day 2015!

February 10 is Safer Internet Day (#SID2015): an annual international event organized by InSafe to help promote safer and more responsible use of online technologies, especially by young people. MediaSmarts and Facebook want you to help us mark the day by reminding youth to “think before they share” online!

Understanding the Internet Lesson 4: Communication and Social Media

In this lesson, students will compare and contrast a variety of online social networking platforms and build an understanding of how they work to share messages. They will reflect on basic online rules and explore concepts of safety and privacy when accessing and sharing information online.

Put Your Best Face Forward

In this lesson, students start by discussing the phenomenon of “selfies” and serve as experts in advising the teacher on the standards by which the “best” selfies are judged. They then discuss a number of statements taken from interviews with youth that highlight issues of self-representation, body image and gender standards, and learn about “photoshopping” images. Finally, students apply what they have learned by modifying an image that is at least 50 years old to meet “selfie” standards.

Talking to kids about media violence

Talking to kids about violence in the media they consume – television, movies, video games, music and the Internet – can help them put media violence into perspective and perhaps diffuse some of its power. 

Managing Television in the Home

Television watching should be a fun and relaxing activity for kids and adults alike—but too often it's a source of family conflict.

If you're concerned about television, banning it isn't a practical solution. Instead, you need to learn to co-exist with television by managing how much your kids watch, and what.

Screen-Free Week

Screen-Free Week is an annual event that traditionally takes place in May. Each year people from around the world make a conscious decision to turn off screens of all kinds for the week.

Building your brand: Establishing a positive presence online

Like it or not, if you use the Internet you have an online identity. Some people call this your "brand." What's a brand? Think about a brand of soft drink, or computer, or jeans, or a band or a sports team. You probably have a certain idea about each one – what it's like, who buys it, and so on.