Sociologist and surveillance scholar David Lyon defines surveillance as “any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered.”
It’s as important for advertisers to reach the right people as it is to make an appealing ad, so they have developed many different ways of targeting ads effectively. Online advertising lets marketers match different ads with individual users. This section looks at how that’s done and how it affects kids’ privacy.
In the 19th century, Métis leader Louis Riel reportedly predicted: “My people will sleep for one hundred years. When they awaken, it will be the artists who give them back their spirit.” Most Indigenous groups in Canada have relied on the oral tradition to convey an idea, message or value.
Being exposed to sexual content is one of Canadian parents’ top worries about their kids’ online experience and also one of kids’ own top concerns. It’s not hard to see why: while there are no longer any explicitly pornographic sites among kids’ favourite platforms and websites – and the services that are their favourites such as TikTok and Instagram ban sexually explicit content – almost a third of Canadian kids have been exposed to porn online without looking for it.
In this section, we examine some concerns related to the movies kids enjoy and we offer tips for talking about problematic film content such as violence and gender and racial stereotyping.
There’s significant evidence that media education can counter unrealistic media representations of men’s and women’s bodies. For example, a 2015 study found that girls as young as Grade 5 who had received media literacy education in school had higher self-esteem and body satisfaction.
Though health and science topics are subject to the same kinds of misinformation found everywhere, there are two types that are particularly common in these fields: denialism and snake oil.
Students in the junior grades lack sufficient critical thinking skills to surf the Web alone, but MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wireless World research shows that almost a third never or rarely use the Internet with an adult nearby. This is also an age where kids may be easily influenced by media images and personalities – especially those that appear "cool" or desirable.
Television is one of the most prevalent media influences in kids' lives. According to the 2011 Active Healthy Kids Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, Canadian youth ages 6-19 average about six hours of screen time per day, with TV programs (watched on a variety of different screens) accounting for much of this time. [1]