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EDSURGE: Vetting Social Studies Resources

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EDSURGE: Vetting Social Studies Resources

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What's at stake in social studies education?

The content of modern social studies curricula is highly contested, and evolving rapidly and sometimes radically. Digital resources abound, with various content advocating strong positions on gun rights, immigration, gender equality, and other hot-button issues. There's a long history of political disagreement about what social studies classes should study - and even whether to use the term "social studies" at all - as well as what knowledge and skills constitute a high-quality social studies education.

Multiple-choice assessments still drive a great deal of what schools teach in social studies, and unfortunately many students become disillusioned with a subject in which accumulating knowledge and memorizing information is emphasized because that's what counts on standardized tests. Even when more complex resources are involved - as in Document Based Questions (DBQs) on AP US or European History exams - the emphasis is on the content of those documents and the speed with which students can decipher them.

What resources say and how they are connected to content knowledge tends to be emphasized over deeper considerations like the perspective, context, and accuracy of the resource. But it's these latter, deeper reading skills that make social studies meaningful and engaging, and which best prepare students for the modern world. How, then, can we support students in building these skills and ways of thinking? How do we select and vet resources that foster engagement and deeper learning?

Where Things Go Wrong: Content over Context

Sam Wineburg, in "Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)," shows the difference between how even the most advanced, critical readers in history and social studies classes approach resources in a way that fundamentally differs from how historians encounter those same resources. He shares an example: a New York Times article from 1892, about the official creation of Discovery Day (later, Columbus Day) as a national holiday. Surely this is a high quality, interesting resource, something students can dig into to understand both the past and the present.

How do AP US History students use this resource? What do they see? Wineburg shares the story of Jacob, a student who sees through the bias in the article, which celebrates Columbus's piety. Jacob notes that Columbus "captured and tortured Indians," and was perhaps not so much the noble hero that the article makes him out to be. The student's critique of the article earns praise from social studies teachers; while there is room for more nuance in his interpretation, the critical lens he brings to the document is exactly what we hope to see. Right?

What happens when Wineburg shows the same document to actual historians? They all approach the article in the same way as each other, and in a wildly different way from students and teachers. What do they notice?

First, that it's from the New York Times, a major publication even in the 1890s. But then, before they even read the content of the article, they ask questions and think about context. The article is written in 1892, 400 years after 1492, during a wave of US immigration.

What's going on then?

Who is responsible for this proclamation?

Why was the proclamation made?

What page of the New York Times was this on? Not page one, so how important was this really to people at the time?

When historians encounter this resource, their first move is to source it and put it in context, not to engage with the content. This article, to them, isn't really about Columbus at all. It's about President Harrison, who was responsible for the proclamation, and the immigration politics in the 1890s.

Sourcing, Contextualization, and Corroboration

The specialized skills that Wineburg's historians brought to bear on a 120-plus-year-old New York Times article are at the heart of social studies education:

1. Assessing the perspective of an author and source.

2. Placing arguments in context.

3. Validating the veracity of a claim.

These are the very skills that teachers should employ in vetting resources. But this can be doubly challenging when navigating the Internet, where materials are often intentionally misleading or untrue, and sometimes quite skillful at hiding their intentions and sources.

Wineburg finds that, unfortunately, even historians struggle when confronting digital resources. However, there are other expert readers of digital content. Professional fact checkers engage in lateral reading of web resources - checking who owns a website, finding out who made (or sponsored) a YouTube video, and determining what, if any, research supports a claim. This process - a mirror of what historians do with primary sources from the past - is the how of good vetting of social studies resources.

Approaches to Vetting: Use Reliable Providers, DIY, or Model for Students

Vetting social studies resources is important not just because we want to ensure students are learning from accurate, verifiable materials. It's important also because the ability to ask questions about sources, bias, and context are at the heart of social studies education and are essential skills for thriving in the modern world.

One approach is to rely on reputable companies and organizations like Newsela, Newseum, The National Archives, and the Stanford History Education Group. These each provide well-vetted resources for social studies teachers that provide ample opportunity to delve into deeper considerations. In some cases, there are even explicit lesson plans and units built to teach good social studies and historical thinking skills.

Another approach is to vet resources for yourself, using a rigorous process that relies on sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating. This can be challenging, but opens up opportunities to model the process for students, and perhaps even to scaffold their own learning of the same skills. It is empowering for students to learn to vet resources for themselves. Not only does it give them more control over telling their own stories, it helps them learn to learn about the modern information ecosystem.

When diving into a new content area, think about how to support students in seeking out knowledge and ideas, then ascertaining the reliability of those resources. More than any one piece of content knowledge, that is the core skill of social studies education.

Further Reading and Resources

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Vetting Social Studies Resources Is Important. And Hard. Here's How to Do It Well. - EdSurge News

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What's at stake in social studies education? The content of modern social studies curricula is highly contested, and evolving rapidly and sometimes radically. Digital resources abound, with various content advocating strong positions on gun rights, immigration, gender equality, and other hot-button issues.

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Please [contact us](https://www.ted.com/contact) and let us know what happened.

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Social Media Literacy: The 5 Key Concepts

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Edutopia blogger Stacey Goodman describes each key concept of media literacy, also explaing why it’s important, as teachers, we know what they are.

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Follow these steps to help kids (and you!) resist fake news, fact-check, and think critically about news and information. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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The ISTE Standards provide the competencies for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age, providing a comprehensive roadmap for the effective use of technology in schools worldwide. Grounded in learning science research and based on practitioner experience, the ISTE Standards ensure that using technology for learning can create high-impact, sustainable, scalable and equitable learning experiences for all learners.

For over 20 years the standards have been used, researched and updated to continuously reflect the latest research-based best practices that define success in using technology to learn, teach, lead and coach. The standards have been adopted in all 50 U.S. states and many countries throughout the world. Aligned to UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals, the standards are available in eight languages.

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The ISTE Standards are a framework for students, educators, administrators, coaches and computer science educators to rethink education and create innovative learning environments. The standards are helping re-engineer schools and classrooms worldwide for digital age learning.

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How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Kids to Be Media-Savvy)

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Clickbait, hyper-partisan opinion, and completely false information are running wild across the internet. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Common Sense Media

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News and America's Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News | Common Sense Media

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Access to reliable, unbiased news is a national imperative, especially when it comes to children. This report from Common Sense Research captures kids' firsthand experiences with news and their views on how the news media portray young people.

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NYTimes

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There is no silver bullet to slay internet lies and fictions. But students can be taught to know when information is reliable.

Credit... Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Ms. Yee is a freelance journalist.

The Instagram post looked strange to Amulya Panakam, a 16-year-old high school student who lives near Atlanta. In February, a friend showed her a sensational headline on her phonethat declared, " Kim Jong Un is personally killing soldiers who have Covid-19!" Of course, the news wasn't real. "I was immediately suspicious," Ms. Panakam said. She searched online and found no media outlets reporting the fake story. But her friends had already shared it on social media.

Ms. Panakam was startled by how often students "grossly handle and spread misinformation without knowing it," she said. Yet media literacy is not part of her school's curriculum.

So Ms. Panakam contacted Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit organization based near Boston that works to spread media literacy education. With its help, she wrote to her state and local representatives to discuss introducing media literacy in schools.

The subject was hardly new. Well before the internet, many scholars analyzed media influence on society. In recent decades, colleges have offered media studies to examine advertising, propaganda, biases, how people are portrayed in films and more.

But in a digital age, media literacy also includes understanding how websites profit from fictional news, how algorithms and bots work, and how to scrutinize suspicious websites that mimic real news outlets.

Now, during the global Covid-19 crisis, identifying reliable health information can be a matter of life or death. And as racial tensions run high in America, hostile actors can harness social media to sow discord and spread disinformation and false voting information, as they did in the 2016 elections and may well be repeating in the current elections.

Indeed, Facebook and Twitter recently shut down fake accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, backed by Russia. Twitter said this month that it suspended nearly 1,600 accounts, including some in Iran that "amplified conversations on politically sensitive topics" like race and social justice.

Online misinformation might seem like an incurable virus, but social media companies, policymakers and nonprofits are beginning to address the problem more directly. In March, big internet companies like Facebook and Twitter started removing misleading Covid-19 posts. And many policymakers are pushing for tighter regulations about harmful content.

What still needs more attention, however, is more and earlier education. Teaching media literacy skills to teenagers and younger students can protect readers and listeners from misinformation, just as teaching good hygiene reduces disease.

A RAND report last year said research showed signs that media literacy increases "resiliency to disinformation."

Erin McNeill, the founder of Media Literacy Now, grew concerned when her young sons were exposed to sexist female stereotypes on television and in video games. She raised the issue to her son's fifth grade teacher, who voluntarily created a media literacy unit that included analyzing those messages.

Going further, she said, "we need policy so it's embedded in the education system," and in 2011 she wrote to Massachusetts politicians and eventually got support from some, notably a state senator, Katherine Clark, who is now a representative in Congress.

Two years later Ms. McNeill founded Media Literacy Now, to help people in other states lobby policymakers. The organization's online tool kit included templates for emailing to elected officials, alongside samples of policy documents, research papers and videos. Changes were already happening before Media Literacy Now was founded. Since 2008, 14 states have passed legislation supporting some form of media literacy in schools, potentially affecting tens of millions of students.

And media literacy is getting more support. Last year, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, introduced a bill calling for $20 million to fund media literacy education.

While that federal bill has little chance of passing, momentum has grown at the state level, and 15 states were considering media literacy bills this year. Media Literacy Now has influenced nearly 30 bills in 18 states since its founding.

In Connecticut, for example, it guided a group of African-American social workers who had founded a company named Welcome 2 Reality to seek new state laws that passed in 2015 and 2017. The state now requires schools to teach safe use of social media and also formed an advisory council on media literacy education that is drafting a baseline report.

Marcus Stallworth, a founder of the social workers' group who has taught an elective titled "Social Media: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly" at the University of Bridgeport, saw how deeply media affected students. "Social media - anyone can say anything," he tells them. He also asks them to consider who is disseminating information and what their intent might be. For example, are posts coming from an official source like the governor, or from a potential scammer?

After connecting with Media Literacy Now, the social workers realized that state education policies could have wider impact. Qur-an Webb, a member of Welcome 2 Reality who saw that ordinary citizens could influence lawmakers, concluded that "these are people we vote for - they should meet with us."

There is no silver bullet for disarming misinformation. But states' media literacy education policies typically include first steps, like creating expert committees to advise education departments or develop media literacy standards. Next come recommending curriculums, training educators, funding school media centers and specialists, monitoring and evaluation.

States set guidelines for education departments, although local districts often have final control of curriculums.

Even without legislation, teachers can incorporate media literacy concepts into existing classes or offer electives. At Andover High School in Massachusetts, Mary Robb has taught the subject for 19 years. As part of Media Literacy Now's advocacy, she and her students testified at a Massachusetts State House hearing in 2013.

Ms. Robb now includes media literacy in civics classes, where students might analyze war propaganda and assess the credibility of websites. "'Fake news' is not news that you disagree with," she emphasized.

At Swampscott High School in Massachusetts, Tom Reid has taught media literacy for 15 years and testified at the State House. He pointed out that lessons should focus on critical thinking, rather than being "too focused on simply trying to get students to reduce their screen time."

Teaching resources already exist. News Literacy Project, for example, has a free 13-lesson online curriculum. Its lessons also cover topics like "deep fake" videos and the role of journalism in a democracy.

Other resources include Ground News, which compares reportage; Adfontes Media, which assesses the reliability of news sources; and Media Education Foundation, which makes documentaries about media's impact.

Establishing policies is one important step, but Media Literacy Now does not track how they are carried out. "Just passing one bill does not necessarily mean the lessons are being taught," Ms. McNeill said. "Advocacy still needs to be done."

Many young people say media literacy is invaluable. Mr. Stallworth's students said they wished they had learned about the subject earlier.

"Why are we waiting until they get to college?" Mr. Stallworth asked. "It makes more sense to introduce them much earlier."

Amy Yee is a journalist who has written about solutions to social problems in the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe.
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Opinion | To Recognize Misinformation in Media, Teach a Generation While It's Young

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There is no silver bullet to slay internet lies and fictions. But students can be taught to know when information is reliable. Ms. Yee is a freelance journalist. The Instagram post looked strange to Amulya Panakam, a 16-year-old high school student who lives near Atlanta.

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Washington Post

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(iStock)

If you don't know what the News Literacy Project is and does, it's time you do.

Founded over a decade ago by Alan Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, the News Literacy Project aims to do something that schools everywhere should be doing: teaching students how to distinguish what's real and fake in the age of digital communication - and at a time when the president of the United States routinely denounces real news as "fake," and Americans will be voting on a new president in 2020.

Miller's enterprise grows every year as teachers increasingly look for resources to teach their students how to evaluate the credibility of information. It has become the leading provider of news literacy education in the country, if not around the world.

The project creates digital curriculum and other resources and works with educators and journalists to teach middle school and high school students how to recognize news and information to trust - and provides them with the tools they need to be informed and engaged participants in a democracy. It uses the standards of quality journalism as an aspirational yardstick against which to measure all news and information. And, just as important, it provides the next generation with an appreciation of the First Amendment and the role of a free press.

"As a result," Miller said, "NLP is on the front lines combating the misinformation pandemic that threatens to undermine civic life in the United States and around the globe."

A sample of the project's work is below, and I plan to publish some every week as a resource for teachers and anybody else who wants to become news literate.

The reach of the News Literacy Project is vast. It has had national success with Checkology virtual classroom, an innovative, award-winning, cutting-edge online platform featuring interactive, real-world lessons. Since launching in May 2016, more than 20,000 educators have registered to use Checkology in social studies, history, government, English and journalism classes with more than 133,000 students in every state. Educators in 110 other countries have registered to use it, as well.

The New York Department of Education has purchased 68,000 student licenses for use this year in 174 middle schools as part of a five-year agreement with the project. And West Virginia is seeding Checkology in school districts in five counties, while Columbia, Mo., has purchased 3,000 licenses and Miami-Dade County is using 1,000. The Los Angeles Unified School District will pilot the platform in 20 middle schools in early 2020. You can see short videos that capture Checkology's impact in one classroom on YouTube and on one student here: https://vimeo.com/339142980.

Fast Company wrote this about the project last year: "The News Literacy Project has emerged as one of the most important educational tools for our time. During the last five years, fake or false news has polluted our social media, and people of all ages are having difficulty discriminating between false news and real news. The courses created by the News Literacy Project should become a fundamental building block of our students' education."

The resources created by the project are original and unique, Miller said, describing its other major initiatives this way:

Each year, NLP produces 10 to 12 NewsLitCamps, where its brings scores of educators into a news organization for a day of professional development that helps teachers and librarians understand how newsrooms work and enables them to take that information back to their classrooms. These events foster stronger ties between the news organizations and their communities as well as increasing mutual understanding of how teachers and journalists do their respective jobs. NLP has done 16 since 2017 with such partners as the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Houston Chronicle, the Charlotte Observer and Univision. You can see a short video on this program here: https://vimeo.com/325524429.

NLP produces a free weekly newsletter called the Sift that takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which publishes weekly during the school year, now has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators.

NLP recently launched a program called Newsroom to Classroom, where journalists enroll to visit schools either in person or virtually and discuss their work and journalism as a way to supplement Checkology. So far, 86 journalists have enrolled. In NLP's initial classroom program, it found that such encounters helped to demystify the newsgathering process and create a bond with the next generation of news consumers.

NLP is embarking on a partnership with E.W. Scripps in connection with the 2020 election. This collaboration will include engaging Scripps's journalists in NLP programs - by visiting classrooms, educating teachers about their work and participating in events. In addition, NLP will share tools and resources to help the general public make informed choices. The partnership will also feature the first National News Literacy Week, between Jan. 27 and Feb. 2, 2020.

NLP's ambitious Strategic Framework 2022 calls for the establishment of a national network of 20,000 educators who use NLP's resources to reach 3 million middle-school and high-school students annually, or 10 percent of the total in the country's public and independent schools. These educators will also become advocates for systemic change to help NLP realize its vision of seeing news literacy embedded in the American educational experience.

"NLP believes its mission is essential to give the next generation the tools to engage fully and effectively in the country's civic life, to preserve quality journalism by building demand for it and to strengthen the health of the nation's democracy," Miller said.

Here are two lessons from this week's edition of THE SIFT, as provided by the News Literacy Project. I will publish lessons every week through the school year.

Northwestern apology firestorm

Student journalists at the Daily Northwestern - the student-run news organization at Northwestern University - sparked intense national debate and criticism among professional journalists and others last week after they apologized in a Nov. 10 column for a series of actions taken by staff members while covering protests of a campus speech five days earlier by former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

After protesters said that they considered photos posted on Twitter by the Daily's photographer, Colin Boyle, and other staff to be retraumatizing and invasive (including one of a student knocked down by police), those photos were deleted. In a statement he posted the night of the protest, Boyle acknowledged that he "failed to get consent on making these images as the tense moments were going on," while noting that he was "doing my best as a photojournalist to document what was happening so that people were aware of what students were going through while Jeff Sessions was on campus" - in essence, standard journalism practice for covering a protest.

Other students were concerned that the Daily staff had used the university directory to find their cellphone numbers and then texted them, asking if they would be willing to be interviewed. In their apology, the student journalists said they recognized this as "an invasion of privacy" - even though journalists regularly use directories for such purposes. In addition, the Daily staff revised its article to remove the name of a protester who was quoted so that the student would be protected from disciplinary action by the university.

"While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe - and in situations like this, that they are benefiting from our coverage rather than being actively harmed by it," eight editors, led by editor in chief Troy Closson, wrote in their Nov. 10 column. "We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry."

A day later, in response to "the concerns that everyone has shared on Twitter," Closson said in a tweet thread that "we covered the protest to its full extent and stand by our reporting" and that the editors' statement "overcorrected" in some ways. He said that it has been challenging to balance his position as editor in chief with both his racial identity - he is only the third black editor in chief in the Daily's history - and the knowledge that the publication has previously failed students of color.

He continued:

Outraged critics, including working journalists and Medill alumni, said the student journalists had nothing to apologize for ( except for their apology) because they were simply practicing journalism.

The Daily operates independently from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country. The newspaper serves both the university community and the city (Evanston, Ill.) in which the school is located.

Medill's dean, Charles Whitaker, weighed in with a statement on Nov. 12: "As the dean of Medill, where many of these young journalists are trained," he wrote, "I am deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering that the students responsible for that coverage have endured for the 'sin' of doing journalism." He called the apology "a heartfelt, though not well-considered editorial," and urged the Medill alumni and other journalists who had condemned it to back off. The student journalists, he said, "were beat into submission by the vitriol and relentless public shaming" and faced "the brutal onslaught of venom and hostility that has been directed their way on weaponized social media."

"I say, give the young people a break," he wrote. "What they need at this moment is our support and the encouragement to stay the course."

· "Medill dean discuses Daily Northwestern controversy and calls for 'campaign of media literacy'" (Brian Stelter, CNN)

· "I write for the Daily Northwestern. We shouldn't apologize for doing our jobs." (Zach Kessel, The Washington Post)

· "Column: The apologetic editorial in Northwestern's student newspaper reveals an issue most black journalists face" (Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune)

· "An Open Letter to Troy Closson, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Northwestern " (Issac J. Bailey, Nieman Reports)

· "Undergraduate Council Votes to Support Act on a Dream Against The Crimson" (Kevin R. Chen, The Harvard Crimson)

Discuss: Do you think the Northwestern student journalists should have apologized for the way they covered the student protests? Do you agree with their response to criticism from their peers? If you don't, how do you think they should have responded? Were they right to take down photos and remove a protester's name from an article to protect the student from potential discipline? Were they wrong to contact students using the university directory to ask if they were willing to be interviewed? Do you think it is insensitive for a news outlet to publish photos of protesters being knocked down by police, or do you think that is an important image for the public to see? What role has photojournalism played historically in exposing violence and other forms of injustice?

Idea: Have students read and review the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics, which was mentioned in the apology. Then ask students to identify which parts of the code were relevant in the Northwestern case.

Another idea: Have students compare and contrast the Northwestern case with the recent backlash against the Harvard Crimson. Ask students which was the better response, and why. Then discuss how the Harvard student journalists might have responded to the criticism received at Northwestern and how the Northwestern student journalists might have responded to the criticism received at Harvard.

NO: National Basketball Association star Stephen Curry didn't cancel his endorsement deal with Nike because the company wouldn't allow him to write a Bible verse on his shoes. YES: Curry switched his shoe endorsement in 2013 after Nike failed to match an offer from Under Armour. YES: Curry's father, Dell, said that there were issues with Nike's approach, including a company official who mispronounced his son's first name and a presentation that included a slide, apparently repurposed (and not updated), featuring Kevin Durant's name. NO: The "Seth Curry" who commented on this Facebook post is not Stephen Curry's younger brother, Seth (who also plays in the NBA).

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Perspective | Fighting the misinformation pandemic: Here's help teaching students to distinguish real news from what's fake

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If you don't know what the News Literacy Project is and does, it's time you do.

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Sofyia Noble - Challenging the Algorithms of Oppression

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Safiya Noble | Challenging the Algorithms of Oppression

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Media Overload: The Problem With Infinite Choice

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Media Overload: The Problem With Infinite Choice | Mashable Explains

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The dark world of data exploitation through the compelling personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal.

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Social Media Dangers Documentary — Childhood 2.0

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How often does technology interrupt us from what we really mean to be doing? At work and at play, we spend a startling amount of time distracted by pings and pop-ups -- instead of helping us spend our time well, it often feels like our tech is stealing it away from us.

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Two years ago, on Safer Internet Day (6th February 2018), the 2018 DQ Impact Report was published in association with the World Economic Forum. That initial report examined online safety and digital citizenship among 38,000 8- to 12-year-olds across 29 countries. Our key finding at that time was that 56% of children were exposed to at least one cyber risk (including risks like cyberbullying, gaming disorder, offline meeting with strangers, and online sexual behaviors). This report created an impetus to expand and deepen our knowledge of the risks children face, as well as what resources act as protective factors.

In the two years following, we have broadened our vision and increased our measurements to examine six major pillars of support for children's online safety. This 2020 COSI compares the results across 30 countries, and includes data from over 145,426 children, as well as from other external sources such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), Economist Intelligence Unit, and others. Learn more about our key findings and methodology in our full report below.

COSI is dedicated to monitoring trends in Child Online Safety around the world with real-time updates. We invite the academic research and expert communities to work together with us to further improve COSI. We especially welcome suggestions of how COSI can become more relevant to researchers' own countries. If interested, please contact us at partnership@dqinstitute.org.

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Check Out the Best Countries for Child Online Safety | DQ Institute

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Two years ago, on Safer Internet Day (6th February 2018), the 2018 DQ Impact Report was published in association with the World Economic Forum. That initial report examined online safety and digital citizenship among 38,000 8- to 12-year-olds across 29 countries.

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“VIEWERS WILL CHANGE THE CHANNEL IF WE MAKE THE CRIME VICTIM BLACK, SO YOU'LL HAVE TO REWRITE THOSE CHARACTERS AND MAKE THEM WHITE INSTEAD.”

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Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

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Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

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This report analyzes representations of gender, race, LGBTQ+, disability, age (over 60) and body size (large) in the top-grossing family films (rated G, PG, or PG-13) of 2019. We also include analysis of leading characters in live action and animated family films from over a decade (2007 – 2019).”

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American news consumers don’t feel that the news media represents them and the industry’s lack of diversity is a huge contributor.

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Two new studies this week couldn't be more timely.

Amid a reckoning with institutionalized racism in the news media industry, the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation conducted separate studies that drew similar conclusions: American news consumers don't feel that the news media represents them and the industry's lack of diversity is a huge contributor.

"Roughly similar portions of black (58%), Hispanic (55%) and white Americans (61%) say the news media misunderstand them, but they cite markedly different reasons for this misunderstanding," Pew found. One third of Black Americans, for example, said their personal characteristics were misunderstood. On the other hand, 39 percent of white Americans said their political views were misunderstood. Then, 26 percent of Hispanic Americans felt their personal interests were misunderstood.

The study gets into more specific demographics, too, including political leanings, religious affiliations, and age groups. "Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are far more likely to feel the news media misunderstand them than Democrats and Democratic leaners (73% vs. 47%)," Pew says. "Male U.S. adults are somewhat more likely than female adults to feel this, and those ages 18 to 29 are more likely to say this than those older than them."

Meanwhile, the Knight Foundation specifically examined newsroom diversity and found that "69% of Americans say that reflecting the diversity of the U.S. population is a 'critical' (35%) or 'very important' (34%) role for the media. Black (50%), Hispanic (43%) and Asian people (41%) are more likely than white people (30%) to say the media's role in reflecting diversity is 'critical.'"

Of the people who want to see newsrooms diversified, they prioritized diversity based on race/ethnicity (35 percent), political views (30 percent), income or social class (18 percent), age (9 percent) and gender (5 percent).

About half of Republicans (51 percent) want to see political diversity increased, while 49 percent of Democrats said racial and ethnic diversity is the most important to them.

As newsrooms across the country look for ways to address diversity issues, both studies (which were conducted before the George Floyd protests beginning in late May) offer at least some insight into how future decisions might be perceived by the public.

NEW RESEARCH: 79% of Americans say news organizations should increase the diversity of their staff - but they disagree on the type of diversity they'd like to see. More new research from @Gallup-Knight: https://t.co/jjwMWSSp3g #trustinnews (THREAD 1/6)

- Knight Foundation (@knightfdn) June 25, 2020

Interesting disparities: White people feel the media misunderstands their politics, for POC it's more about personal attributes: https://t.co/GYVIov7Hq5

- Catherine McGloin (@catmcgloin) June 26, 2020

Race vs politics? "Roughly similar portions of black (58%), Hispanic (55%) and white Americans (61%) say the news media misunderstand them, but they cite markedly different reasons for this misunderstanding."
https://t.co/Zwbc8IO0WF

- Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (@rasmus_kleis) June 26, 2020

"... U.S. adults living in areas with a higher proportion of Hispanic residents were somewhat less likely to feel a connection to local journalists and news organizations ..."

*clears throat* I'VE BEEN TELLING Y'ALL THIS https://t.co/X3jc2ldKei

- Elvia Limón (@elvialimon) June 25, 2020

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Two new studies about media and diversity can help newsrooms through their reckoning with racism

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Two new studies this week couldn't be more timely. Amid a reckoning with institutionalized racism in the news media industry, the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation conducted separate studies that drew similar conclusions: American news consumers don't feel that the news media repres...

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"Black Panther" has been hailed as a model success story for depicting diversity on screen. According to past research, the representation of minority groups in mass media has a powerful educational impact on audiences.

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Why Seeing Yourself Represented on Screen Is So Important

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"Black Panther" has been hailed as a model success story for depicting diversity on screen. According to past research, the representation of minority groups in mass media has a powerful educational impact on audiences.

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DQ is defined as “a comprehensive set of technical, cognitive, meta-cognitive, and socio-emotional competencies that are grounded in universal moral values and that enable individuals to face the challenges and harness the opportunities of digital life.”

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Its framework aggregated across more than 25 prior leading frameworks about digital literacy and skills. It lays out a common language, structure, and taxonomy around digital literacy, skills, and readiness that can be benchmarked, referenced, and adopted across nations and sectors worldwide.

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The Child Online Safety Index (COSI), the world-first real-time measure to help nations better understand their children’s online safety status.

The 2020 COSI is based on data collected from 145,426 children and adolescents in 30 different countries from 2017-2019 as part of the #DQEveryChildinitiative.

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Two years ago, on Safer Internet Day (6th February 2018), the 2018 DQ Impact Report was published in association with the World Economic Forum. That initial report examined online safety and digital citizenship among 38,000 8- to 12-year-olds across 29 countries. Our key finding at that time was that 56% of children were exposed to at least one cyber risk (including risks like cyberbullying, gaming disorder, offline meeting with strangers, and online sexual behaviors). This report created an impetus to expand and deepen our knowledge of the risks children face, as well as what resources act as protective factors.

In the two years following, we have broadened our vision and increased our measurements to examine six major pillars of support for children's online safety. This 2020 COSI compares the results across 30 countries, and includes data from over 145,426 children, as well as from other external sources such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), Economist Intelligence Unit, and others. Learn more about our key findings and methodology in our full report below.

COSI is dedicated to monitoring trends in Child Online Safety around the world with real-time updates. We invite the academic research and expert communities to work together with us to further improve COSI. We especially welcome suggestions of how COSI can become more relevant to researchers' own countries. If interested, please contact us at partnership@dqinstitute.org.

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Two years ago, on Safer Internet Day (6th February 2018), the 2018 DQ Impact Report was published in association with the World Economic Forum. That initial report examined online safety and digital citizenship among 38,000 8- to 12-year-olds across 29 countries.

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How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day.

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Tristan Harris: How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day

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A handful of people working at a handful of tech companies steer the thoughts of billions of people every day, says design thinker Tristan Harris. From Facebook notifications to Snapstreaks to YouTube autoplays, they're all competing for one thing: your attention.

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NYTimes: Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology

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NYTimes: Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology

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A decade ago, Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard professor and renowned father of sociobiology, was asked whether humans would be able to solve the crises that would confront them over the next 100 years.

“Yes, if we are honest and smart,” he replied. “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”

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Opinion | Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology (Published 2019)

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We must realign our digital platforms with the values that make us human.

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Digital Well-Being Guidelines for Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Instead of trying to remove all screens from our lives, consider the type of activity you and your children are doing on screens. For example, creating or being in conversation is often better for well-being than passively scrolling or consuming others’ content.

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"...if you dislike the idea of living in a digital dictatorship or some similarly degraded form of society—then the most important contribution you can make is to find ways to prevent too much data from being concentrated in too few hands, and also find ways to keep distributed data processing more efficient than centralized data processing"

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Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don't take steps to stop it.

Yoshi Sodeoka

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series that attempts to answer the question: Is democracy dying?

I. The Growing Fear of Irrelevance

There is nothing inevitable about democracy. For all the success that democracies have had over the past century or more, they are blips in history. Monarchies, oligarchies, and other forms of authoritarian rule have been far more common modes of human governance.

The emergence of liberal democracies is associated with ideals of liberty and equality that may seem self-evident and irreversible. But these ideals are far more fragile than we believe. Their success in the 20th century depended on unique technological conditions that may prove ephemeral.

In the second decade of the 21st century, liberalism has begun to lose credibility. Questions about the ability of liberal democracy to provide for the middle class have grown louder; politics have grown more tribal; and in more and more countries, leaders are showing a penchant for demagoguery and autocracy. The causes of this political shift are complex, but they appear to be intertwined with current technological developments. The technology that favored democracy is changing, and as artificial intelligence develops, it might change further.

Information technology is continuing to leap forward; biotechnology is beginning to provide a window into our inner lives-our emotions, thoughts, and choices. Together, infotech and biotech will create unprecedented upheavals in human society, eroding human agency and, possibly, subverting human desires. Under such conditions, liberal democracy and free-market economics might become obsolete.

From Our October 2018 Issue

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Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology in any detail, but they can sense that the future is passing them by. In 1938 the common man's condition in the Soviet Union, Germany, or the United States may have been grim, but he was constantly told that he was the most important thing in the world, and that he was the future (provided, of course, that he was an "ordinary man," rather than, say, a Jew or a woman). He looked at the propaganda posters-which typically depicted coal miners and steelworkers in heroic poses-and saw himself there: "I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!"

In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious terms are bandied about excitedly in ted Talks, at government think tanks, and at high-tech conferences- globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, AI, machine learning -and common people, both men and women, may well suspect that none of these terms is about them.

In the 20th century, the masses revolted against exploitation and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power. Now the masses fear irrelevance, and they are frantic to use their remaining political power before it is too late. Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump may therefore demonstrate a trajectory opposite to that of traditional socialist revolutions. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but feared they were losing their economic worth. Perhaps in the 21st century, populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore. This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

The revolutions in information technology and biotechnology are still in their infancy, and the extent to which they are responsible for the current crisis of liberalism is debatable. Most people in Birmingham, Istanbul, St. Petersburg, and Mumbai are only dimly aware, if they are aware at all, of the rise of AI and its potential impact on their lives. It is undoubtable, however, that the technological revolutions now gathering momentum will in the next few decades confront humankind with the hardest trials it has yet encountered.

II. A New Useless Class?

Let's start with jobs and incomes, because whatever liberal democracy's philosophical appeal, it has gained strength in no small part thanks to a practical advantage: The decentralized approach to decision making that is characteristic of liberalism-in both politics and economics-has allowed liberal democracies to outcompete other states, and to deliver rising affluence to their people.

Liberalism reconciled the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, the faithful with atheists, natives with immigrants, and Europeans with Asians by promising everybody a larger slice of the pie. With a constantly growing pie, that was possible. And the pie may well keep growing. However, economic growth may not solve social problems that are now being created by technological disruption, because such growth is increasingly predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies.

Fears of machines pushing people out of the job market are, of course, nothing new, and in the past such fears proved to be unfounded. But artificial intelligence is different from the old machines. In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in manual skills. Now they are beginning to compete with us in cognitive skills. And we don't know of any third kind of skill-beyond the manual and the cognitive-in which humans will always have an edge.

At least for a few more decades, human intelligence is likely to far exceed computer intelligence in numerous fields. Hence as computers take over more routine cognitive jobs, new creative jobs for humans will continue to appear. Many of these new jobs will probably depend on cooperation rather than competition between humans and AI. Human-AI teams will likely prove superior not just to humans, but also to computers working on their own.

However, most of the new jobs will presumably demand high levels of expertise and ingenuity, and therefore may not provide an answer to the problem of unemployed unskilled laborers, or workers employable only at extremely low wages. Moreover, as AI continues to improve, even jobs that demand high intelligence and creativity might gradually disappear. The world of chess serves as an example of where things might be heading. For several years after IBM's computer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997, human chess players still flourished; AI was used to train human prodigies, and teams composed of humans plus computers proved superior to computers playing alone.

Yet in recent years, computers have become so good at playing chess that their human collaborators have lost their value and might soon become entirely irrelevant. On December 6, 2017, another crucial milestone was reached when Google's AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program. Stockfish 8 had won a world computer chess championship in 2016. It had access to centuries of accumulated human experience in chess, as well as decades of computer experience. By contrast, AlphaZero had not been taught any chess strategies by its human creators-not even standard openings. Rather, it used the latest machine-learning principles to teach itself chess by playing against itself. Nevertheless, out of 100 games that the novice AlphaZero played against Stockfish 8, AlphaZero won 28 and tied 72-it didn't lose once. Since AlphaZero had learned nothing from any human, many of its winning moves and strategies seemed unconventional to the human eye. They could be described as creative, if not downright genius.

Can you guess how long AlphaZero spent learning chess from scratch, preparing for the match against Stockfish 8, and developing its genius instincts? Four hours. For centuries, chess was considered one of the crowning glories of human intelligence. AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide.

AlphaZero is not the only imaginative software out there. One of the ways to catch cheaters in chess tournaments today is to monitor the level of originality that players exhibit. If they play an exceptionally creative move, the judges will often suspect that it could not possibly be a human move-it must be a computer move. At least in chess, creativity is already considered to be the trademark of computers rather than humans! So if chess is our canary in the coal mine, we have been duly warned that the canary is dying. What is happening today to human-AI teams in chess might happen down the road to human-AI teams in policing, medicine, banking, and many other fields.

What's more, AI enjoys uniquely nonhuman abilities, which makes the difference between AI and a human worker one of kind rather than merely of degree. Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.

For example, many drivers are unfamiliar with all the changing traffic regulations on the roads they drive, and they often violate them. In addition, since every driver is a singular entity, when two vehicles approach the same intersection, the drivers sometimes miscommunicate their intentions and collide. Self-driving cars, by contrast, will know all the traffic regulations and never disobey them on purpose, and they could all be connected to one another. When two such vehicles approach the same junction, they won't really be two separate entities, but part of a single algorithm. The chances that they might miscommunicate and collide will therefore be far smaller.

Similarly, if the World Health Organization identifies a new disease, or if a laboratory produces a new medicine, it can't immediately update all the human doctors in the world. Yet even if you had billions of AI doctors in the world-each monitoring the health of a single human being-you could still update all of them within a split second, and they could all communicate to one another their assessments of the new disease or medicine. These potential advantages of connectivity and updatability are so huge that at least in some lines of work, it might make sense to replace all humans with computers, even if individually some humans still do a better job than the machines.

All of this leads to one very important conclusion: The automation revolution will not consist of a single watershed event, after which the job market will settle into some new equilibrium. Rather, it will be a cascade of ever bigger disruptions. Old jobs will disappear and new jobs will emerge, but the new jobs will also rapidly change and vanish. People will need to retrain and reinvent themselves not just once, but many times.

from the
Just as in the 20th century governments established massive education systems for young people, in the 21st century they will need to establish massive reeducation systems for adults. But will that be enough? Change is always stressful, and the hectic world of the early 21st century has produced a global epidemic of stress. As job volatility increases, will people be able to cope? By 2050, a useless class might emerge, the result not only of a shortage of jobs or a lack of relevant education but also of insufficient mental stamina to continue learning new skills.

III. The Rise of Digital Dictatorships

As many people lose their economic value, they might also come to lose their political power. The same technologies that might make billions of people economically irrelevant might also make them easier to monitor and control.

AI frightens many people because they don't trust it to remain obedient. Science fiction makes much of the possibility that computers or robots will develop consciousness-and shortly thereafter will try to kill all humans. But there is no particular reason to believe that AI will develop consciousness as it becomes more intelligent. We should instead fear AI because it will probably always obey its human masters, and never rebel. AI is a tool and a weapon unlike any other that human beings have developed; it will almost certainly allow the already powerful to consolidate their power further.
atlantic archives
"IN ALL THIS high-tech commercial world there is nothing that looks particularly democratic. It lends itself to surveillance as well as liberty, to new forms of manipulation and covert control as well as new kinds of participation, to skewed, unjust market outcomes as well as greater productivity. The consumer society and the open society are not quite synonymous. Capitalism and democracy have a relationship, but it is something less than a marriage." Read more

Matt Huynh

Consider surveillance. Numerous countries around the world, including several democracies, are busy building unprecedented systems of surveillance. For example, Israel is a leader in the field of surveillance technology, and has created in the occupied West Bank a working prototype for a total-surveillance regime. Already today whenever Palestinians make a phone call, post something on Facebook, or travel from one city to another, they are likely to be monitored by Israeli microphones, cameras, drones, or spy software. Algorithms analyze the gathered data, helping the Israeli security forces pinpoint and neutralize what they consider to be potential threats. The Palestinians may administer some towns and villages in the West Bank, but the Israelis command the sky, the airwaves, and cyberspace. It therefore takes surprisingly few Israeli soldiers to effectively control the roughly 2.5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank.

In one incident in October 2017, a Palestinian laborer posted to his private Facebook account a picture of himself in his workplace, alongside a bulldozer. Adjacent to the image he wrote, "Good morning!" A Facebook translation algorithm made a small error when transliterating the Arabic letters. Instead of Ysabechhum (which means "Good morning"), the algorithm identified the letters as Ydbachhum (which means "Hurt them"). Suspecting that the man might be a terrorist intending to use a bulldozer to run people over, Israeli security forces swiftly arrested him. They released him after they realized that the algorithm had made a mistake. Even so, the offending Facebook post was taken down-you can never be too careful. What Palestinians are experiencing today in the West Bank may be just a primitive preview of what billions of people will eventually experience all over the planet.

Imagine, for instance, that the current regime in North Korea gained a more advanced version of this sort of technology in the future. North Koreans might be required to wear a biometric bracelet that monitors everything they do and say, as well as their blood pressure and brain activity. Using the growing understanding of the human brain and drawing on the immense powers of machine learning, the North Korean government might eventually be able to gauge what each and every citizen is thinking at each and every moment. If a North Korean looked at a picture of Kim Jong Un and the biometric sensors picked up telltale signs of anger (higher blood pressure, increased activity in the amygdala), that person could be in the gulag the next day.

And yet such hard-edged tactics may not prove necessary, at least much of the time. A facade of free choice and free voting may remain in place in some countries, even as the public exerts less and less actual control. To be sure, attempts to manipulate voters' feelings are not new. But once somebody (whether in San Francisco or Beijing or Moscow) gains the technological ability to manipulate the human heart-reliably, cheaply, and at scale-democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show.

We are unlikely to face a rebellion of sentient machines in the coming decades, but we might have to deal with hordes of bots that know how to press our emotional buttons better than our mother does and that use this uncanny ability, at the behest of a human elite, to try to sell us something-be it a car, a politician, or an entire ideology. The bots might identify our deepest fears, hatreds, and cravings and use them against us. We have already been given a foretaste of this in recent elections and referendums across the world, when hackers learned how to manipulate individual voters by analyzing data about them and exploiting their prejudices. While science-fiction thrillers are drawn to dramatic apocalypses of fire and smoke, in reality we may be facing a banal apocalypse by clicking.

The biggest and most frightening impact of the AI revolution might be on the relative efficiency of democracies and dictatorships. Historically, autocracies have faced crippling handicaps in regard to innovation and economic growth. In the late 20th century, democracies usually outperformed dictatorships, because they were far better at processing information. We tend to think about the conflict between democracy and dictatorship as a conflict between two different ethical systems, but it is actually a conflict between two different data-processing systems. Democracy distributes the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given 20th-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all available information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is one reason the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy.

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However, artificial intelligence may soon swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. In fact, it might make centralized systems far more efficient than diffuse systems, because machine learning works better when the machine has more information to analyze. If you disregard all privacy concerns and concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, you'll wind up with much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. An authoritarian government that orders all its citizens to have their DNA sequenced and to share their medical data with some central authority would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data are strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century-the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place-may become their decisive advantage in the 21st century.

Yoshi Sodeoka

New technologies will continue to emerge, of course, and some of them may encourage the distribution rather than the concentration of information and power. Blockchain technology, and the use of cryptocurrencies enabled by it, is currently touted as a possible counterweight to centralized power. But blockchain technology is still in the embryonic stage, and we don't yet know whether it will indeed counterbalance the centralizing tendencies of AI. Remember that the Internet, too, was hyped in its early days as a libertarian panacea that would free people from all centralized systems-but is now poised to make centralized authority more powerful than ever.

IV. The Transfer of Authority to Machines

Even if some societies remain ostensibly democratic, the increasing efficiency of algorithms will still shift more and more authority from individual humans to networked machines. We might willingly give up more and more authority over our lives because we will learn from experience to trust the algorithms more than our own feelings, eventually losing our ability to make many decisions for ourselves. Just think of the way that, within a mere two decades, billions of people have come to entrust Google's search algorithm with one of the most important tasks of all: finding relevant and trustworthy information. As we rely more on Google for answers, our ability to locate information independently diminishes. Already today, "truth" is defined by the top results of a Google search. This process has likewise affected our physical abilities, such as navigating space. People ask Google not just to find information but also to guide them around. Self-driving cars and AI physicians would represent further erosion: While these innovations would put truckers and human doctors out of work, their larger import lies in the continuing transfer of authority and responsibility to machines.

Humans are used to thinking about life as a drama of decision making. Liberal democracy and free-market capitalism see the individual as an autonomous agent constantly making choices about the world. Works of art-be they Shakespeare plays, Jane Austen novels, or cheesy Hollywood comedies-usually revolve around the hero having to make some crucial decision. To be or not to be? To listen to my wife and kill King Duncan, or listen to my conscience and spare him? To marry Mr. Collins or Mr. Darcy? Christian and Muslim theology similarly focus on the drama of decision making, arguing that everlasting salvation depends on making the right choice.

What will happen to this view of life as we rely on AI to make ever more decisions for us? Even now we trust Netflix to recommend movies and Spotify to pick music we'll like. But why should AI's helpfulness stop there?

Every year millions of college students need to decide what to study. This is a very important and difficult decision, made under pressure from parents, friends, and professors who have varying interests and opinions. It is also influenced by students' own individual fears and fantasies, which are themselves shaped by movies, novels, and advertising campaigns. Complicating matters, a given student does not really know what it takes to succeed in a given profession, and doesn't necessarily have a realistic sense of his or her own strengths and weaknesses.

It's not so hard to see how AI could one day make better decisions than we do about careers, and perhaps even about relationships. But once we begin to count on AI to decide what to study, where to work, and whom to date or even marry, human life will cease to be a drama of decision making, and our conception of life will need to change. Democratic elections and free markets might cease to make sense. So might most religions and works of art. Imagine Anna Karenina taking out her smartphone and asking Siri whether she should stay married to Karenin or elope with the dashing Count Vronsky. Or imagine your favorite Shakespeare play with all the crucial decisions made by a Google algorithm. Hamlet and Macbeth would have much more comfortable lives, but what kind of lives would those be? Do we have models for making sense of such lives?

Can parliaments and political parties overcome these challenges and forestall the darker scenarios? At the current moment this does not seem likely. Technological disruption is not even a leading item on the political agenda. During the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the main reference to disruptive technology concerned Hillary Clinton's email debacle, and despite all the talk about job loss, neither candidate directly addressed the potential impact of automation. Donald Trump warned voters that Mexicans would take their jobs, and that the U.S. should therefore build a wall on its southern border. He never warned voters that algorithms would take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall around California.

So what should we do?

For starters, we need to place a much higher priority on understanding how the human mind works-particularly how our own wisdom and compassion can be cultivated. If we invest too much in AI and too little in developing the human mind, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might serve only to empower the natural stupidity of humans, and to nurture our worst (but also, perhaps, most powerful) impulses, among them greed and hatred. To avoid such an outcome, for every dollar and every minute we invest in improving AI, we would be wise to invest a dollar and a minute in exploring and developing human consciousness.

More practically, and more immediately, if we want to prevent the concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, we must regulate the ownership of data. In ancient times, land was the most important asset, so politics was a struggle to control land. In the modern era, machines and factories became more important than land, so political struggles focused on controlling these vital means of production. In the 21st century, data will eclipse both land and machinery as the most important asset, so politics will be a struggle to control data's flow.

Unfortunately, we don't have much experience in regulating the ownership of data, which is inherently a far more difficult task than regulating land or machines. Data are everywhere and nowhere at the same time, they can move at the speed of light, and you can create as many copies of them as you want. Do the data collected about my DNA, my brain, and my life belong to me, or to the government, or to a corporation, or to the human collective?

The race to accumulate data is already on, and is currently headed by giants such as Google and Facebook and, in China, Baidu and Tencent. So far, many of these companies have acted as "attention merchants"-they capture our attention by providing us with free information, services, and entertainment, and then they resell our attention to advertisers. Yet their true business isn't merely selling ads. Rather, by capturing our attention they manage to accumulate immense amounts of data about us, which are worth more than any advertising revenue. We aren't their customers-we are their product.

Ordinary people will find it very difficult to resist this process. At present, many of us are happy to give away our most valuable asset-our personal data-in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. But if, later on, ordinary people decide to try to block the flow of data, they are likely to have trouble doing so, especially as they may have come to rely on the network to help them make decisions, and even for their health and physical survival.

Nationalization of data by governments could offer one solution; it would certainly curb the power of big corporations. But history suggests that we are not necessarily better off in the hands of overmighty governments. So we had better call upon our scientists, our philosophers, our lawyers, and even our poets to turn their attention to this big question: How do you regulate the ownership of data?

Currently, humans risk becoming similar to domesticated animals. We have bred docile cows that produce enormous amounts of milk but are otherwise far inferior to their wild ancestors. They are less agile, less curious, and less resourceful. We are now creating tame humans who produce enormous amounts of data and function as efficient chips in a huge data-processing mechanism, but they hardly maximize their human potential. If we are not careful, we will end up with downgraded humans misusing upgraded computers to wreak havoc on themselves and on the world.

If you find these prospects alarming-if you dislike the idea of living in a digital dictatorship or some similarly degraded form of society-then the most important contribution you can make is to find ways to prevent too much data from being concentrated in too few hands, and also find ways to keep distributed data processing more efficient than centralized data processing. These will not be easy tasks. But achieving them may be the best safeguard of democracy.
This article has been adapted from Yuval Noah Harari's book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

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Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don't take steps to stop it. Editor's Note: This article is part of a series that attempts to answer the question: Is democracy dying?

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In the third of four posts presenting findings from the Makerspaces in the early years (MakEY) final report, Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross, and Paige Mustain discuss why, despite claims of "tech-free" parenting among tech-elite parents, they are eager to benefit from makerspaces provided for young children.
There has been a rising trend among tech elites of ditching digital devices at home. " Bill Gates and Steve Jobs raised their kids tech-free" was a popular headline for news stories two years ago. The trend is proven by the enrolment of the children of tech industry parents in unconventional low-tech schools such as Brightworks in San Francisco and the many Waldorf schools across the country. These schools are known for their emphasis on creative play and a strategic lack of technology based on the belief that kids learn best through playful, learner-led approaches. Interestingly, these playful learner-led approaches shape the same philosophy that the makerspace movement has grown out of. However, a central component of makerspaces [1] has been the access to digital fabrication and open electronics resources. So why would Silicon Valley parents seek out makerspaces for their children?

Over the last two years we have been researching how parents support their young children (three- to ten-year-olds) to learn in Silicon Valley makerspaces as part of an international research project called Makerspaces in the Early Years ( MakEY) [2]. What we found is that tech-elite parents seeking makerspaces don't really focus on the technology but are keen to cultivate creativity and messy play in a safe place, away from what they view as the harms of unfettered technology use. One could even argue there is a distinct synergy between the ethos of the makerspace and that of early years' learning (even though most makerspaces are for adults, as is most research about them).

Makerspaces range from no- to high-tech but the ones we observed in Silicon Valley all relied on technological resources to a greater or lesser degree. And despite claims of "tech-free" parenting among tech-elite parents, we found them eager to benefit from makerspaces provided for young children. Although seemingly contradictory, as noted in our previous work, parents attempting a deliberately low-tech home draw a distinction between productive uses of technology and " mindless " screen time. As they told us, on the one hand, they restrict technology use at home but, on the other, they see makerspaces as opportunities for children to engage with the technological resources in a more controlled way that, as they see it, is productive rather than "socially destructive." Indeed, despite restricting technology at home, these parents still recognised the importance of digital skills today. Their aim is to stave off technology as long as possible, building their child's other skills first in the hope that they would be sufficient to ensure later responsible and safe use of technology. One mum explained:

"I'm not a Luddite, I mean, I'm just trying to protect, really, their space and their ability to have new experiences, because I know eventually I'm going to be, they're going to be in that world inevitably."

Discussing his views on technology while echoing the ethos of makerspaces where creativity and collaboration are central, one dad that works in tech said:

"What's going to differentiate the humans from the internet is the ability to think and solve problems and work collaboratively with other people and social intelligence. So I want him to learn all of that stuff, and be good at that stuff. So I want him to be creative and think critically, solve problems, know how to get along with people, be a good teammate. That's far more important to me."

Another mum valued the makerspace less for its messy creativity, therefore, and more for helping with needed skill development:

"I think free play is important, but, like with drawing right now is giving him fine motor skills, so that he can actually use the pencil. I'm just trying to expose him to those things to get those skills that he's going to need."

Our previous work within the Connected Learning framework led us to wonder how parents themselves connect their child's sites of learning in the face of the seeming contradiction between minimising tech use at home while driving children to out-of-school tech-rich learning activities. Their explanations reveal how parents find a rationale that provides continuity as well as connection across sites. For instance, some parents we spoke with, including one who has their child in a Waldorf school, said they use makerspaces as the STEM portion or as a supplement for their children's education. Others emphasise creative play at home, saying that their motivation for visiting the makerspace was not about the technology at all, but about continuing to foster creativity. One parent explained:

"Generally his world is playing with balls and trucks and cars. It's really hard for me to get him engaged in creative or artsy things. He doesn't like to draw. Whenever I try to get him into that sort of more creative, design or anything, I try to incorporate cars or planes or balls. So I thought this would be perfect...But I love how innovative it is from like drawing the picture and then using the tablet."

A dad added, "And it's not about learning, the effort around learning. It's really about something where you can experiment on your own level."

Also important to Silicon Valley parents seeking out makerspaces is that they think makerspaces can help cultivate their children's interests to help them become creators rather than consumers in the digital age. One parent conveyed how they felt the makerspace helps their child become a creator by saying:

"And so you become the person who creates whatever the next thing is, rather than being like, oh this button is for that, which I think limits your mind."

Notes
Indeed, empowerment is a common phrase used to describe the benefits of makerspace learning. It is usually meant to describe the freedom to explore and tinker. In other words, it represents the learner-led exploratory learning makerspaces are built upon rather than traditional rote learning in school. Several parents expressed this as "holistic" or "organic" learning:

"But honestly, we are more like, we want to give a more organic learning."

This article represents the views of the author, and not the position of the Parenting for a Digital Future blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
So while they tend to control technology use at home and encourage it in the makerspace, their "parenting philosophy" (whether for STEM or creative learning or, most abstractly, for autonomy or empowerment) bridges these different learning sites in ways meaningful within the family.

These varied motivations highlight the openness of makerspaces, able to cultivate a wide-range of skills and interests both with and without the use of technology. Regardless of parents' views on technology, most were enthusiastic about makerspaces' cultivation of creativity. Makerspaces present themselves as unique sites to foster creative learning while potentially developing those important digital skills. Despite the growing low-tech trend among tech elites there is still recognition from those parents of the importance of those skills in today's digital age. However, the wide range and level of tech use observed at makerspaces alongside the varied motivations among parents makes us wonder if the technology itself is a vital component or if the same can be accomplished without it.

[1] Makerspaces are collaborative work spaces that allow everyone from young children to adults to learn, explore, and experiment through making. While there is a wide range of tools within them, many makerspaces have a variety of maker equipment such as laser cutters and 3D printers. These tools are often used alongside art materials such as cardboard, LEGO, and tape.

[2] The MakEY project is an international research project led by Professor Jackie Marsh from the University of Sheffield. It brings together researchers looking at the benefits and challenges of running makerspaces in formal and informal educational settings. The goal of the project is to advance understandings of the role of makerspaces in young children's digital literacy and creativity development.

About the author

Posted In: Our publications

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What motivates 'tech-free' Silicon Valley parents to enrol their children in makerspaces?

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In the third of four posts presenting findings from the Makerspaces in the early years (MakEY) final report, Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross, and Paige Mustain discuss why, despite claims of "tech-free" parenting among tech-elite parents, they are eager to benefit from makerspaces provided for young children.

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Our goal is to share those lessons, spur ideas, and possibly offer some models and considerations about how to use digital media to ignite the hearts, minds and souls of youth.

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Time: Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media For Your Mental Health

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Time: Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media For Your Mental Health

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"While the photo-based platform got points for self-expression and self-identity, it was also associated with high levels of anxiety, depression, bullying and FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.”

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Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health

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Instagram and Snapchat are the worst social media networks for mental health, according to a new survey of teenagers and young adults.

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Does Binge-Watching Netflix Warp Your View of the World

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Does Binge-Watching Netflix Warp Your View of the World

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Researchers found a correlation between binge-watching and negative world views.

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Do you view the world as overall nice or mean? Before you answer that question, you might want to tally up how much time you've spent binge-watching online shows lately.

Online platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have transformed the way we watch television shows-instead of waiting for a new episode to come out once a week, viewers can now watch their favorite series whenever and wherever it's convenient. It's not uncommon for people to binge-watch popular shows, sometimes consuming an entire season (or even multiple seasons) in one sitting. Binge-watching has been defined as watching three or more episodes of a TV show in one sitting.

But some of the most popular online series portray violence in ways that don't accurately reflect what's going on in real life. So does watching these shows have an effect on the way we perceive the world, even after we've stepped away from the computer or TV screen?

That's one of the questions BU College of Communication (COM) researchers Sarah Krongard and Mina Tsay-Vogel answered in a recent study. In December 2018, the pair published a paper in Psychology of Popular Media Culture examining whether people who view the most popular binge-watched shows see the world as meaner than it really is-a phenomenon known as "mean world syndrome." This idea stems from a long-standing theory called "cultivation," which proposes that watching television leads people to believe the real world is closely aligned to what they see on their screen.

"Our hypothesis was that people who are more likely to watch these commonly binge-watched programs-so, heavier viewing of these programs-would be more likely to report stronger mean world perceptions," says study senior author Tsay-Vogel, a COM associate professor of communication and codirector of BU's Communication Research Center.

These same patterns, the duo hypothesized, would also be negatively related to "kind world perception"-as Tsay-Vogel explains it, these binge-watchers "would be more likely to think people are not altruistic and not as helpful and not as honest."

During the fall of 2015, Krongard and Tsay-Vogel looked at the five most commonly binge-watched online TV series-all of which were Netflix original shows: House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Marco Polo, Bloodline, and Daredevil.

Next, the researchers and a group of COM students catalogued the instances of violence in each show, including frequency, nature, justification, and perpetrator and target characteristics. They found violence in the top-streamed shows was very prevalent, graphic, and intentional. Perpetrators and targets of violence also aligned with race and gender stereotypes previously documented in traditional broadcast TV shows.

"In particular, white perpetrators tended to be the ones who were morally justified in their behavior," says Krongard, a graduate researcher working on a PhD in emerging media studies. "Nonwhite perpetrators did not have that privilege."

To see what effects, if any, watching these shows had on frequent viewers, the researchers surveyed 366 COM undergraduate students who participated in the study for course credit. The students were asked questions to assess their TV watching habits and their perceptions of society-for example, choosing a number between 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree) in response to statements like "Most people would try to take advantage of me if they get a chance"; "Most of the time, people are just looking out for themselves"; "Most people are kindhearted"; and "Most people are honest."

When they examined the survey results, Krongard and Tsay-Vogel found that the more hours spent watching these online original series, the more likely it was that the viewer saw the world as a mean and scary place.

Krongard and Tsay-Vogel acknowledge that their research was limited by self-reported data that may not reflect the actual exposure to the media. In addition, correlation does not mean causation. Future studies, they say, would have to be longitudinal so they could watch for changes in TV viewing, TV content, and real-world perceptions over time.

"It might be that people who are already viewing the world as a fearful, scary place are drawn to these types of programs," says Krongard.

What advice do Tsay-Vogel and Krongard have for people who think their binge-watching habits might be influencing their worldview? They both agree that awareness is a good first step. See if watching something else causes you to view the world in a different way, suggests Krongard.

"Try to engage critically with what you're watching. Try to think about: Who made this? Why? What is the purpose?" she says.

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How Binge-Watching Netflix Warps Your View of the World

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Do you view the world as overall nice or mean? Before you answer that question, you might want to tally up how much time you've spent binge-watching online shows lately. Online platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have transformed the way we watch television shows-instead of waiting for a new episode to come out once a week, viewers can now watch their favorite series whenever and wherever it's convenient.

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“We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand.”

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Credit Credit Photo Illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times; Getty Images (woman and child)

"I am convinced the devil lives in our phones."

Credit Credit Photo Illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times; Getty Images (woman and child)

SAN FRANCISCO - The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don't want their own children anywhere near them.

A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K.

"Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little," said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. "If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more."

Ms. Stecher, 37, and her husband, Rushabh Doshi, researched screen time and came to a simple conclusion: they wanted almost none of it in their house. Their daughters, ages 5 and 3, have no screen time "budget," no regular hours they are allowed to be on screens. The only time a screen can be used is during the travel portion of a long car ride (the four-hour drive to Tahoe counts) or during a plane trip.

Recently she has softened this approach. Every Friday evening the family watches one movie.

More about kids and screens

There is a looming issue Ms. Stecher sees in the future: Her husband, who is 39, loves video games and thinks they can be educational and entertaining. She does not.

"We'll cross that when we come to it," said Ms. Stecher, who is due soon with a boy.

Some of the people who built video programs are now horrified by how many places a child can now watch a video.

Asked about limiting screen time for children, Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist who for years directed product for YouTube at Google, sent a photo of a potty training toilet with an iPad attached and wrote: "Hashtag 'products we didn't buy.'"

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Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer in Menlo Park, Calif., said their daughters, ages 5 and 3, have no screen time "budget," no regular hours they are allowed to be on screens. Credit Peter Prato for The New York Times

Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said: "I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children."

Ms. Chavarria did not let her children have cellphones until high school, and even now bans phone use in the car and severely limits it at home.

She said she lives by the mantra that the last child in the class to get a phone wins. Her daughter did not get a phone until she started ninth grade.

"Other parents are like, 'Aren't you worried you don't know where your kids are when you can't find them?'" Ms. Chavarria said. "And I'm like, 'No, I do not need to know where my kids are every second of the day.'"

For longtime tech leaders, watching how the tools they built affect their children has felt like a reckoning on their life and work.

Among those is Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now the chief executive of a robotics and drone company. He is also the founder of GeekDad.com.

"On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it's closer to crack cocaine," Mr. Anderson said of screens.

Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said.

"We thought we could control it," Mr. Anderson said. "And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand."

He has five children and 12 tech rules. They include: no phones until the summer before high school, no screens in bedrooms, network-level content blocking, no social media until age 13, no iPads at all and screen time schedules enforced by Google Wifi that he controls from his phone. Bad behavior? The child goes offline for 24 hours.

"I didn't know what we were doing to their brains until I started to observe the symptoms and the consequences," Mr. Anderson said.

"This is scar tissue talking. We've made every mistake in the book, and I think we got it wrong with some of my kids," Mr. Anderson said. "We glimpsed into the chasm of addiction, and there were some lost years, which we feel bad about."

His children attended private elementary school, where he saw the administration introduce iPads and smart whiteboards, only to "descend into chaos and then pull back from it all."

This idea that Silicon Valley parents are wary about tech is not new. The godfathers of tech expressed these concerns years ago, and concern has been loudest from the top.

Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, said earlier this year that he would not let his nephew join social networks. Bill Gates banned cellphones until his children were teenagers, and Melinda Gates wrote that she wished they had waited even longer. Steve Jobs would not let his young children near iPads.

But in the last year, a fleet of high-profile Silicon Valley defectors have been sounding alarms in increasingly dire terms about what these gadgets do to the human brain. Suddenly rank-and-file Silicon Valley workers are obsessed. No-tech homes are cropping up across the region. Nannies are being asked to sign no-phone contracts.

Those who have exposed their children to screens try to talk them out of addiction by explaining how the tech works.

John Lilly, a Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist with Greylock Partners and the former C.E.O. of Mozilla, said he tries to help his 13-year-old son understand that he is being manipulated by those who built the technology.

"I try to tell him somebody wrote code to make you feel this way - I'm trying to help him understand how things are made, the values that are going into things and what people are doing to create that feeling," Mr. Lilly said. "And he's like, 'I just want to spend my 20 bucks to get my Fortnite skins.'"

And there are those in tech who disagree that screens are dangerous. Jason Toff, 32, who ran the video platform Vine and now works for Google, lets his 3-year-old play on an iPad, which he believes is no better or worse than a book. This opinion is unpopular enough with his fellow tech workers that he feels there is now "a stigma."

"One reaction I got just yesterday was, 'Doesn't it worry you that all the major tech execs are limiting screen time?'" Mr. Toff said. "And I was like, 'Maybe it should, but I guess I've always been skeptical of norms.' People are just scared of the unknown."

"It's contrarian," Mr. Toff said. "But I feel like I'm speaking for a lot of parents that are afraid of speaking out loud for fear of judgment."

He said he thinks back to his own childhood growing up watching a lot of TV. "I think I turned out O.K.," Mr. Toff said.

Other Silicon Valley parents say there are ways to make some limited screen time slightly less toxic.

Renee DiResta, a security researcher on the board of the Center for Humane Tech, won't allow passive screen time, but will allow short amounts of time on challenging games.

She wants her 2- and 4-year-old children to learn how to code young, so she embraces their awareness of gadgets. But she distinguishes between these types of screen use. Playing a building game is allowed, but watching a YouTube video is not, unless it is as a family.

And Frank Barbieri, a San Francisco-based executive at the start-up PebblePost that tracks online activity to send direct mail advertising, tries to limit his 5-year-old daughter's screen time to Italian language content.

"We have friends who are screen abolitionists, and we have friends who are screen liberalists," Mr. Barbieri said.

He had read studies on how learning a second language at a young age is good for the developing mind, so his daughter watches Italian-language movies and TV shows.

"For us, honestly, me and my wife were like, 'Where would we like to visit?'" Mr. Barbieri said.

Nellie Bowles covers tech and internet culture. Follow her on Twitter: @nelliebowles

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Silicon Valley Wary of the 'Devil' in Our Phones. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

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"I am convinced the devil lives in our phones." Credit Credit Photo Illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times; Getty Images (woman and child) SAN FRANCISCO - The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it.

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Joe Toscano

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Want to Work for Google? You Already Do. | Joe Toscano | TEDxLincoln

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Wired: Free Speech Is Not The Same As Free Reach

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Wired: Free Speech Is Not The Same As Free Reach

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"The social internet is mediated by algorithms: recommendation engines, search, trending, autocomplete, and other mechanisms that predict what we want to see next. The algorithms don’t understand what is propaganda and what isn’t, or what is “fake news” and what is fact-checked. Their job is to surface relevant content (relevant to the user, of course)..."

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The algorithms that govern how we find information online are once again in the news-but you have to squint to find them.

"Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results," reads an August 28 New York Times headline. The piece features a bombastic president, a string of bitter tweets, and accusations of censorship. "Algorithms" are mentioned, but not until the twelfth paragraph.

Trump-like so many other politicians and pundits-has found search and social media companies to be convenient targets in the debate over free speech and censorship online. "They have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD," the president recently tweeted. He added: "They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation---will be addressed!"

Renee DiResta (@noUpside) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, the director of research at New Knowledge, and a Mozilla fellow on media, misinformation, and trust. She is affiliated with the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

Trump is partly right: They are controlling what we can and cannot see. But "they" aren't the executives leading Google, Facebook, and other technology companies. "They" are the opaque, influential algorithms that determine what content billions of internet users read, watch, and share next.

These algorithms are invisible, but they have an outsized impact on shaping individuals' experience online and society at large. Indeed, YouTube's video-recommendation algorithm inspires 700,000,000 hours of watch time per day -and can spread misinformation, disrupt elections, and incite violence. Algorithms like this need fixing.

But in this moment, the conversation we should be having-how can we fix the algorithms?-is instead being co-opted and twisted by politicians and pundits howling about censorship and miscasting content moderation as the demise of free speech online. It would be good to remind them that free speech does not mean free reach. There is no right to algorithmic amplification. In fact, that's the very problem that needs fixing.

To see how this algorithm amplification works, simply look to RT, or Russia Today, a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet that's also among the most popular YouTube presences. RT has amassed more than 6 billion views across 22 channels, more than MSNBC and Fox News combined. According to YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan, 70 percent of views on YouTube are from recommendations -so the site's algorithms are largely responsible for amplifying RT's propaganda hundreds of millions of times.

How? Most RT viewers don't set out in search of Russian propaganda. The videos that rack up the views are RT's clickbait-y, gateway content: videos of towering tsunamis, meteors striking buildings, shark attacks, amusement park accidents, some that are years old but have comments from within an hour ago. This disaster porn is highly engaging; the videos have been viewed tens of millions of times and are likely watched until the end. As a result, YouTube's algorithm likely believes other RT content is worth suggesting to the viewers of that content-and so, quickly, an American YouTube user looking for news finds themselves watching Russia's take on Hillary Clinton, immigration, and current events. These videos are served up in autoplay playlists alongside content from legitimate news organizations, giving RT itself increased legitimacy by association.

The social internet is mediated by algorithms: recommendation engines, search, trending, autocomplete, and other mechanisms that predict what we want to see next. The algorithms don't understand what is propaganda and what isn't, or what is "fake news" and what is fact-checked. Their job is to surface relevant content (relevant to the user, of course), and they do it exceedingly well. So well, in fact, that the engineers who built these algorithms are sometimes baffled: "Even the creators don't always understand why it recommends one video instead of another," says Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTube engineer who worked on the site's algorithm.

These opaque algorithms with their singular purpose-"keep watching"-coupled with billions of users is a dangerous recipe. In recent years, we've seen how dire the consequences can be. Propaganda like RT content is circulated far and wide to disinform and worsen polarization, especially during democratic elections. YouTube's algorithms can also radicalize by suggesting "white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials, and other disturbing content," Zeynep Tufekci recently wrote in the Times. "YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century."

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Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach

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The algorithms that govern how we find information online are once again in the news-but you have to squint to find them. "Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results," reads an August 28 New York Times headline. The piece features a bombastic president, a string of bitter tweets, and accusations of censorship.

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The Atlantic: The Dark Psychology of Social Networks

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The Atlantic: The Dark Psychology of Social Networks

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"...As social media has aged, however, optimism has faded and the list of known or suspected harms has grown: Online political discussions (often among anonymous strangers) are experienced as angrier and less civil than those in real life; networks of partisans co-create worldviews that can become more and more extreme; disinformation campaigns flourish; violent ideologies lure recruits."

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Why it feels like everything is going haywire

Suppose that the biblical story of Creation were true: God created the universe in six days, including all the laws of physics and all the physical constants that apply throughout the universe. Now imagine that one day, in the early 21st century, God became bored and, just for fun, doubled the gravitational constant. What would it be like to live through such a change? We'd all be pulled toward the floor; many buildings would collapse; birds would fall from the sky; the Earth would move closer to the sun, reestablishing orbit in a far hotter zone.

Let's rerun this thought experiment in the social and political world, rather than the physical one. The U.S. Constitution was an exercise in intelligent design. The Founding Fathers knew that most previous democracies had been unstable and short-lived. But they were excellent psychologists, and they strove to create institutions and procedures that would work with human nature to resist the forces that had torn apart so many other attempts at self-governance.

For example, in " Federalist No. 10," James Madison wrote about his fear of the power of "faction," by which he meant strong partisanship or group interest that "inflamed [men] with mutual animosity" and made them forget about the common good. He thought that the vastness of the United States might offer some protection from the ravages of factionalism, because it would be hard for anyone to spread outrage over such a large distance. Madison presumed that factious or divisive leaders "may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States." The Constitution included mechanisms to slow things down, let passions cool, and encourage reflection and deliberation.

Madison's design has proved durable. But what would happen to American democracy if, one day in the early 21st century, a technology appeared that-over the course of a decade-changed several fundamental parameters of social and political life? What if this technology greatly increased the amount of "mutual animosity" and the speed at which outrage spread? Might we witness the political equivalent of buildings collapsing, birds falling from the sky, and the Earth moving closer to the sun?

America may be going through such a time right now.

What Social Media Changed

Facebook's early mission was "to make the world more open and connected"-and in the first days of social media, many people assumed that a huge global increase in connectivity would be good for democracy. As social media has aged, however, optimism has faded and the list of known or suspected harms has grown: Online political discussions (often among anonymous strangers) are experienced as angrier and less civil than those in real life; networks of partisans co-create worldviews that can become more and more extreme; disinformation campaigns flourish; violent ideologies lure recruits.

The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other's jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?

The social psychologist Mark Leary coined the term sociometer to describe the inner mental gauge that tells us, moment by moment, how we're doing in the eyes of others. We don't really need self-esteem, Leary argued; rather, the evolutionary imperative is to get others to see us as desirable partners for various kinds of relationships. Social media, with its displays of likes, friends, followers, and retweets, has pulled our sociometers out of our private thoughts and posted them for all to see.
Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus.
If you constantly express anger in your private conversations, your friends will likely find you tiresome, but when there's an audience, the payoffs are different-outrage can boost your status. A 2017 study by William J. Brady and other researchers at NYU measured the reach of half a million tweets and found that each moral or emotional word used in a tweet increased its virality by 20 percent, on average. Another 2017 study, by the Pew Research Center, showed that posts exhibiting "indignant disagreement" received nearly twice as much engagement -including likes and shares-as other types of content on Facebook.

The philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke have proposed the useful phrase moral grandstanding to describe what happens when people use moral talk to enhance their prestige in a public forum. Like a succession of orators speaking to a skeptical audience, each person strives to outdo previous speakers, leading to some common patterns. Grandstanders tend to "trump up moral charges, pile on in cases of public shaming, announce that anyone who disagrees with them is obviously wrong, or exaggerate emotional displays." Nuance and truth are casualties in this competition to gain the approval of the audience. Grandstanders scrutinize every word spoken by their opponents-and sometimes even their friends-for the potential to evoke public outrage. Context collapses. The speaker's intent is ignored.

Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus, even when we know that it can make us cruel and shallow. As the Yale psychologist Molly Crockett has argued, the normal forces that might stop us from joining an outrage mob-such as time to reflect and cool off, or feelings of empathy for a person being humiliated-are attenuated when we can't see the person's face, and when we are asked, many times a day, to take a side by publicly "liking" the condemnation.
From October 2018: America is living James Madison's nightmare
In other words, social media turns many of our most politically engaged citizens into Madison's nightmare: arsonists who compete to create the most inflammatory posts and images, which they can distribute across the country in an instant while their public sociometer displays how far their creations have traveled.

Upgrading the Outrage Machine

At its inception, social media felt very different than it does today. Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook all appeared between 2002 and 2004, offering tools that helped users connect with friends. The sites encouraged people to post highly curated versions of their lives, but they offered no way to spark contagious outrage. This changed with a series of small steps, designed to improve user experience, that collectively altered the way news and anger spread through American society. In order to fix social media-and reduce its harm to democracy-we must try to understand this evolution.

When Twitter arrived in 2006, its primary innovation was the timeline: a constant stream of 140-character updates that users could view on their phone. The timeline was a new way of consuming information-an unending stream of content that, to many, felt like drinking from a fire hose.

Later that year, Facebook launched its own version, called the News Feed. In 2009, it added the "Like" button, for the first time creating a public metric for the popularity of content. Then it added another transformative innovation: an algorithm that determined which posts a user would see, based on predicted "engagement"-the likelihood of an individual interacting with a given post, figuring in the user's previous likes. This innovation tamed the fire hose, turning it into a curated stream.

The News Feed's algorithmic ordering of content flattened the hierarchy of credibility. Any post by any producer could stick to the top of our feeds as long as it generated engagement. "Fake news" would later flourish in this environment, as a personal blog post was given the same look and feel as a story from The New York Times.

Twitter also made a key change in 2009, adding the "Retweet" button. Until then, users had to copy and paste older tweets into their status updates, a small obstacle that required a few seconds of thought and attention. The Retweet button essentially enabled the frictionless spread of content. A single click could pass someone else's tweet on to all of your followers-and let you share in the credit for contagious content. In 2012, Facebook offered its own version of the retweet, the "Share" button, to its fastest-growing audience: smartphone users.

Chris Wetherell was one of the engineers who created the Retweet button for Twitter. He admitted to BuzzFeed earlier this year that he now regrets it. As Wetherell watched the first Twitter mobs use his new tool, he thought to himself: "We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon."

The coup de grâce came in 2012 and 2013, when Upworthy and other sites began to capitalize on this new feature set, pioneering the art of testing headlines across dozens of variations to find the version that generated the highest click-through rate. This was the beginning of "You won't believe ..." articles and their ilk, paired with images tested and selected to make us click impulsively. These articles were not usually intended to cause outrage (the founders of Upworthy were more interested in uplift). But the strategy's success ensured the spread of headline testing, and with it emotional story-packaging, through new and old media alike; outrageous, morally freighted headlines proliferated in the following years. In Esquire, Luke O'Neil reflected on the changes wrought on mainstream media and declared 2013 to be "The Year We Broke the Internet." The next year, Russia's Internet Research Agency began mobilizing its network of fake accounts, across every major social-media platform-exploiting the new outrage machine in order to inflame partisan divisions and advance Russian goals.

The internet, of course, does not bear sole responsibility for the pitch of political anger today. The media have been fomenting division since Madison's time, and political scientists have traced a portion of today's outrage culture to the rise of cable television and talk radio in the 1980s and '90s. A multiplicity of forces are pushing America toward greater polarization. But social media in the years since 2013 has become a powerful accelerant for anyone who wants to start a fire.

The Decline of Wisdom

Even if social media could be cured of its outrage-enhancing effects, it would still raise problems for the stability of democracy. One such problem is the degree to which the ideas and conflicts of the present moment dominate and displace older ideas and the lessons of the past. As children grow up in America, rivers of information flow continually into their eyes and ears-a mix of ideas, narratives, songs, images, and more. Suppose we could capture and quantify three streams in particular: information that is new (created within the past month), middle-aged (created 10 to 50 years ago, by the generations that include the child's parents and grandparents), and old (created more than 100 years ago).
Citizens are now more connected to one another, on platforms that have been designed to make outrage contagious.
Whatever the balance of these categories was in the 18th century, the balance in the 20th century surely shifted toward the new as radios and television sets became common in American homes. And that shift almost certainly became still more pronounced, and quickly so, in the 21st century. When the majority of Americans began using social media regularly, around 2012, they hyper-connected themselves to one another in a way that massively increased their consumption of new information-entertainment such as cat videos and celebrity gossip, yes, but also daily or hourly political outrages and hot takes on current events-while reducing the share of older information. What might the effect of that shift be?

In 1790, the Anglo-Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke wrote, "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages." Thanks to social media, we are embarking on a global experiment that will test whether Burke's fear is valid. Social media pushes people of all ages toward a focus on the scandal, joke, or conflict of the day, but the effect may be particularly profound for younger generations, who have had less opportunity to acquire older ideas and information before plugging themselves into the social-media stream.

Our cultural ancestors were probably no wiser than us, on average, but the ideas we inherit from them have undergone a filtration process. We mostly learn of ideas that a succession of generations thought were worth passing on. That doesn't mean these ideas are always right, but it does mean that they are more likely to be valuable, in the long run, than most content generated within the past month. Even though they have unprecedented access to all that has ever been written and digitized, members of Gen Z (those born after 1995 or so) may find themselves less familiar with the accumulated wisdom of humanity than any recent generation, and therefore more prone to embrace ideas that bring social prestige within their immediate network yet are ultimately misguided.

For example, a few right-wing social-media platforms have enabled the most reviled ideology of the 20th century to draw in young men hungry for a sense of meaning and belonging and willing to give Nazism a second chance. Left-leaning young adults, in contrast, seem to be embracing socialism and even, in some cases, communism with an enthusiasm that at times seems detached from the history of the 20th century. And polling suggests that young people across the political spectrum are losing faith in democracy.

Is There Any Way Back?

Social media has changed the lives of millions of Americans with a suddenness and force that few expected. The question is whether those changes might invalidate assumptions made by Madison and the other Founders as they designed a system of self-governance. Compared with Americans in the 18th century-and even the late 20th century-citizens are now more connected to one another, in ways that increase public performance and foster moral grandstanding, on platforms that have been designed to make outrage contagious, all while focusing people's minds on immediate conflicts and untested ideas, untethered from traditions, knowledge, and values that previously exerted a stabilizing effect. This, we believe, is why many Americans-and citizens of many other countries, too-experience democracy as a place where everything is going haywire.

It doesn't have to be this way. Social media is not intrinsically bad, and has the power to do good-as when it brings to light previously hidden harms and gives voice to previously powerless communities. Every new communication technology brings a range of constructive and destructive effects, and over time, ways are found to improve the balance. Many researchers, legislators, charitable foundations, and tech-industry insiders are now working together in search of such improvements. We suggest three types of reform that might help:
There was a time in American public life when atonement was seen as a form of strength-a way not only to own up to one's missteps but also to control the narrative. That time is over, Megan Garber writes.
(1) Reduce the frequency and intensity of public performance. If social media creates incentives for moral grandstanding rather than authentic communication, then we should look for ways to reduce those incentives. One such approach already being evaluated by some platforms is "demetrication," the process of obscuring like and share counts so that individual pieces of content can be evaluated on their own merit, and so that social-media users are not subject to continual, public popularity contests.

(2) Reduce the reach of unverified accounts. Bad actors-trolls, foreign agents, and domestic provocateurs-benefit the most from the current system, where anyone can create hundreds of fake accounts and use them to manipulate millions of people. Social media would immediately become far less toxic, and democracies less hackable, if the major platforms required basic identity verification before anyone could open an account-or at least an account type that allowed the owner to reach large audiences. (Posting itself could remain anonymous, and registration would need to be done in a way that protected the information of users who live in countries where the government might punish dissent. For example, verification could be done in collaboration with an independent nonprofit organization.)

(3) Reduce the contagiousness of low-quality information. Social media has become more toxic as friction has been removed. Adding some friction back in has been shown to improve the quality of content. For example, just after a user submits a comment, AI can identify text that's similar to comments previously flagged as toxic and ask, "Are you sure you want to post this?" This extra step has been shown to help Instagram users rethink hurtful messages. The quality of information that is spread by recommendation algorithms could likewise be improved by giving groups of experts the ability to audit the algorithms for harms and biases.

Many Americans may think that the chaos of our time has been caused by the current occupant of the White House, and that things will return to normal whenever he leaves. But if our analysis is correct, this will not happen. Too many fundamental parameters of social life have changed. The effects of these changes were apparent by 2014, and these changes themselves facilitated the election of Donald Trump.

If we want our democracy to succeed-indeed, if we want the idea of democracy to regain respect in an age when dissatisfaction with democracies is rising-we'll need to understand the many ways in which today's social-media platforms create conditions that may be hostile to democracy's success. And then we'll have to take decisive action to improve social media.
This article appears in the December 2019 print edition with the headline "Why It Feels Like Everything Is Going Haywire."

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now.what social media changedfacebook’s early mission

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violent ideologies lure recruits.the problem

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Why it feels like everything is going haywire Suppose that the biblical story of Creation were true: God created the universe in six days, including all the laws of physics and all the physical constants that apply throughout the universe.

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Dr. Cal Newport

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Quit social media | Dr. Cal Newport | TEDxTysons

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The Windows And Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelves

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The Windows And Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelves

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The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf | Grace Lin | TEDxNatick

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"None of the criticism of "13 Reasons Why" means that we shouldn't talk about suicide; we should. In fact, it's critical that we do. But we need to do it right. We know that contact-based education -- when people share their personal stories of struggle and recovery -- is by far the most effective way of breaking down stigma surrounding suicide, which is the primary reason people don't speak up or get help."

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why '13 reasons why' is dangerous (opinion)  - cnn

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Mark Henick, an advocate and survivor of multiple suicide attempts, outlines what "13 Reasons Why" gets wrong about suicide and why it matters.

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"This study does not provide definitive proof that 13 Reasons Why is associated with harmful outcomes, but the findings are sufficiently concerning so as to warrant greater care and attention by Netflix and other entertainment producers. "

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Playing Games Can Build 21st-Century Skills

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Playing Games Can Build 21st-Century Skills

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“Research has shown our brains are “wired for pleasure,” and that games are an effective way to learn because they simulate adventure and keep our brains engaged and happy. But what exactly do we learn from them? In an era consumed with teaching 21st-century soft skills, are games any good at building critical thinking or collaboration skills? The answer is likely yes, but, much like games themselves, it’s complicated.”

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As anyone who's ever spent hours hunched over Candy Crush can attest, there's something special about games. Sure they're fun, but they can also be absorbing, frustrating, challenging and complex.

Research has shown our brains are " wired for pleasure," and that games are an effective way to learn because they simulate adventure and keep our brains engaged and happy. But what exactly do we learn from them? In an era consumed with teaching 21st-century soft skills, are games any good at building critical thinking or collaboration skills? The answer is likely yes, but, much like games themselves, it's complicated.

"What you'll find from the research is that it's very much dependent on, 'under certain types of conditions, certain types of skills seem to be developed,'" explains game designer and theorist Katie Salen, a former executive director at the nonprofit Institute of Play. "I never want to make claims that games writ-large for any kid-under any circumstances-teach these sort of skills."

On a Quest

A decade ago, Salen helped design and open a Manhattan middle school with a unique proposition. Instead of learning from a combination of books, lectures and software, as students do at most schools, the primary mode of instruction for kids attending Quest to Learn is games.

Digital games were included from the start, of course, but the school also decided to include elements of game design in nearly everything kids did during the day. Thus, learning objectives were reframed as quests-a staple of many role playing games-challenging kids to design a safe transport into the earth's crust during science class or simulate court cases during civics. Socratic Seminars, a group discussion technique popular in English classes, were turned into Socratic Smackdowns, where students earned points based on how well they structured arguments.

A project of the Institute of Play, Quest, as the school is known, is an Innovation Zone (or iZone) school, itself a project of the city's public school system. It eventually expanded into high school, scaling up its challenges like levels in a video game and borrowing elements from game design-such as its approach to final exams, which are interactive and structured like "final boss" levels.

Yet even though the school is zoned for a wealthy area of Manhattan, where achievement is highly prized, standardized test scores were nothing special. As part of a long-term study on the school, a team of researchers at NYU, led by Richard Arum, decided to look at other metrics, including a performance-based test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which is designed to measure various problem solving and reasoning skills.

The NYU team found that in just one year, the average Quest student in grades eight to ten showed as much growth on the exam as college students did on a similar performance-based test across four years. The takeaway? Quest students learned skills like problem solving at a much faster rate than students in college.

Additionally, Arum has said that the school is adept at building soft skills, such as design thinking, along with collaboration and critical thinking. Part of that success may be attributable to the way games are designed-e.g., minimizing failure and providing immediate feedback for students. Though it might also have to do with the conditions for learning espoused by Salen (who has since stepped away from Quest, but still sits on the Institute's board).

If it does have to do with conditions, then how games are used for learning-and the context teachers place them in-might be just as important as the games themselves. But make no mistake: game design is very important for learning.

The Balanced Game

Research hasn't shown much evidence that games-in general-lead to increased learning outcomes. Even getting good at a game is no guarantee those skills will transfer to other tasks in our lives. Instead, learning through play appears to be context specific.

A highly-competitive game, for example, can build persistence and even collaboration as anxious players work through solutions in order to win. Likewise, a multiplayer role-playing game poses challenges that require players to work together, setting the stage for collaborative problem solving. And kids who, say, design their own cities using simulation games may show stronger problem-solving abilities than peers learning about cities in more traditional ways.

When games succeed at teaching broader skills that go beyond content-level knowledge, they often do so because they marry the best parts of entertainment gameplay-or the feedback loops and successive challenges that keep us glued to Candy Crush-with established learning theories, such as constructivism (learning by doing and reflection) or flow (learning by being perfectly immersed and focused on an activity).

In fact, all games use learning theory to some extent. Think about it: You don't turn on Tetris or Tomb Raider for the first time knowing how to play. You have to learn while the game teaches you-and it all has to be engaging and immersive enough for you to want to keep playing.

There's another reason why games can be so good at teaching certain soft skills, such as resilience, problem solving and collaboration: They put us in a state of play. That, in turn, makes taking risks and failing-acts we typically try to avoid-part of the process, and even the excitement.

"We expect games to be spaces where we fail," Salen says. "It's actually fun to get better at something in a game when it's structured in the right way."

Essentially, Salen contends that games are just systems that put a stack of difficult problems in front of players, and then challenge them to figure out how to solve them. In really good games, the challenges are hard, but there are enough opportunities sprinkled in-such as collecting resources or trading with others-that let you progressively develop these skills and succeed.

How games are designed can also play a big role in whether we learn, or even keep playing. Well-designed games feature certain design elements that motivate us to either try harder or try a different approach. These games are adaptive-that is, they get harder as we progress-and they engage our curiosity. They make us want to discover new things, they provide immediate feedback and they spell out goals in a clear way. Often, they feed on our competitive side and when we do well, they provide some sort of reward-even if it's just a smiley face at the end of a level.

On the flip side, "a poorly designed game is one that we would say is maybe not balanced correctly," Salen says. It may be too hard at some times, too easy at others. It doesn't differentiate based on our skill level and, as a result, can feel too frustrating or repetitive.

"Games have to be designed in a way so they have what we call a level playing field," Salen explains. "At all moments, all players need to feel like they have a chance to win. When we talk about skill development, it takes time. If you want to keep your players in your game so that they can develop skills, you have to continually engage them."

Play, Explore, Study, Build

In 2016, two researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina set out to see what the existing research really had to say about gaming's impact on 21st-century skills. In their published meta-analysis, they found a "dearth of high-quality" research on the subject, indicating the field is either unpopular with researchers or tough to measure. In the end, they managed to identify 29 separate studies-which mostly looked at problem solving and critical thinking skills-and examined their outcomes.

Many of the studies that showed the most significant results focused specifically on critical thinking skills. According to the Clemson analysis, these studies "rarely targeted other 21st-century skills such as creativity and collaboration as learning outcomes."

But the crux of their findings goes back to those game design elements so crucial to a game's success-and our enjoyment of it. Interestingly, the researchers found that not all design elements are created equal when it comes to imparting soft skills. The studies that showed the most success (i.e., larger effect sizes) incorporated specific game design elements, including collaboration, competition, role playing, and exploration and discovery.

Yet elements such as clear goals, the use of strategy and even low-stakes failure were less frequently associated with successful outcomes. Those things are undoubtedly nice to have-but design elements that correlate directly to specific skills appear to be more useful for students. Naturally, the authors concluded that educators looking to boost 21st-century skills should select games that emphasize those elements that made the most impact.

Perhaps the most successful games in the analysis were ones where students had to actually create something themselves. The researchers called them design-based games, and noted they could take a number of forms. Some asked students to create their own games using block-based coding tools, while others asked them to produce an interactive story about their learning by the end of the lesson.

After analyzing a variety of studies that looked at different game genres, including educational and entertainment games, the researchers concluded that design-based games performed the best. In other words, students either learned more or showed better improvement in skills like critical thinking when they created something during or after gameplay.

When the journalist Greg Toppo visited Quest to Learn for his book, " The Game Believes in You," he found a similar phenomena happening there. Kids weren't spending all day glued to screens as they tried to level up in content-specific games. Instead, he observed, they spent much more time engaged in making or doing things, such as designing clothes for a future game, writing reflections, arguing over rules or creating their own games. And the students using digital devices were typically playing open sandbox games, which encourage creation and exploration and can be adapted for a variety of subjects and tasks.

The Quest approach maps to other research and best practices, which hold that a sizable amount of learning comes from the collaboration and creativity that takes place around gameplay. For example, pairing kids up to play a game can get them working and solving problems together, but it also forces them to explain the subject at hand.

"In the moment they're talking about it, you get a lot of learning for free because they might have to think about technical terminology," says Kurt Squire, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied how games impact learning. "That's a general finding in research in other fields, but it works in kind of a cool way in games."

Squire is a champion of a game-based learning model he calls "Play, Explore, Study, Build," which leans heavily on learning theories like constructivism. In this model, students only play games for around 10 percent of the time, typically in the beginning. The rest of the time they're doing related activities that don't involve gaming at all. Thus, a fifth-grader might start out by playing a life science game to draw him into the topic, but then spend the rest of the unit exploring and researching the topic, getting out into nature and finally building something tangible, such as a model ecosystem, either physically or digitally.

In short, games can kickstart learning, but students need to learn how to apply those skills to the analog world as well. Strategies like these may hold the key to building more resilient and adaptive players, both in class and in life.

"The goal is to think about games in the context of a broader pedagogical model," Squire says. "It's never games or traditional activity-it's always about the interplay between them."

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Playing Games Can Build 21st-Century Skills. Research Explains How. - EdSurge News

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As anyone who's ever spent hours hunched over Candy Crush can attest, there's something special about games. Sure they're fun, but they can also be absorbing, frustrating, challenging and complex. Research has shown our brains are " wired for pleasure," and that games are an effective way to learn because they simulate adventure and keep our brains engaged and happy.

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"As I struggled, I thought: Lots of young people pay lots of money to engage in an activity that is hard, long, and complex. As an educator, I realized that this was just the problem our schools face: How do you get someone to learn something long, hard, and

complex and yet enjoy it."

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"Two decades in, and it’s abundantly clear that one of the most effective ways to nurture the 21st century’s trademark skills—creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration—is by creating opportunities for kids to do what kids do naturally: play. So we’ve crafted this educators’ guide to game-based learning, packed with resources for gaming gurus and greenhorns alike."

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Two decades in, and it's abundantly clear that one of the most effective ways to nurture the 21st century's trademark skills-creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration-is by creating opportunities for kids to do what kids do naturally: play. So we've crafted this educators' guide to game-based learning, packed with resources for gaming gurus and greenhorns alike.

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Game-Based Learning: Preparing Students for The Future - EdSurge Guides

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Two decades in, and it's abundantly clear that one of the most effective ways to nurture the 21st century's trademark skills-creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration-is by creating opportunities for kids to do what kids do naturally: play. So we've crafted this educators' guide to game-based learning, packed with resources for gaming gurus and greenhorns alike.

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Stanford experts provide guidance for how parents and teachers can navigate the Fortnite craze

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Much has been written about Fortnite: Battle Royale. The multiplayer shooter game has more than 45 million participants and, thanks to a mobile version, is proving to be a major classroom and home distraction. How should parents and teachers approach it? We asked Stanford experts in education and communication to offer their insights from research and their own experiences working with teachers and families.

And while Fortnite may be the current craze, these tips should, generally, help when the next diversion comes along.
Games can support robust learning practices
Kids who play Fortnite and other similar games willingly engage in a complicated activity for long periods of time. They practice teamwork, collaboration, strategic thinking, spatial understanding and imagination-and when they lose, they're highly motivated to try again for a better result.

But there's more to gaming than just "tapping buttons within a single virtual world," says Antero Garcia, an assistant professor in Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE). Many players also engage in a wrap-around culture that encourages the sharing of strategy articles, YouTube videos, a kind of fan fiction and more.
They are also highly addictive, and have been shown to reduce empathy
Needless to say, we've come a long way from early version video games. Designers "know a lot more about the cognitive structures that shape how people play and get addicted to gaming, and you can see those things in a game like Fortnite," Garcia says.

They've also become much smarter about extracting different kinds of capital-whether that's personal information, through the linking of social media profiles, or money, through the purchasing of virtual currency.

And while Fortnite is more cartoonish than other first-person shooter games, it shares the same essential structures. Those haven't been shown to make kids more violent in real life, but there's good evidence they do reduce empathy.

Recent research has also suggested that kids are having a harder time reading faces and understanding emotional cues, thanks to digital immersion.
That mix of good and bad can be frustrating
Twenty-five years of research have confirmed that, with games, "you are what you eat," says Byron Reeves, professor of communication and by courtesy education -and Fortnite has both healthy and unhealthy ingredients.

As a parent or teacher, you certainly have the option of saying, 'That's trash; don't touch it,'" says Reeves. "But you might be throwing out a little good with the bad."

Instead, he and his colleagues recommend a few alternative approaches.
Make classwork more engaging
One consensus recommendation for teachers: take some of the stuff kids like about Fortnite, and build that into your own lessons.

"The working with others, the collaboration-particularly at the middle school and high school level - that's what kids crave," says GSE senior lecturer Denise Pope, co-founder of Challenge Success. "The more you can plan interactive lessons, the better."
Consider stricter rules on phones, to keep Fortnite out of your classroom ...
Self-regulation is not a strong point for teenagers-our prefrontal cortexes are not fully formed until we're in our late 20's-and phones are hard to resist. ( Research has shown they're a distraction even when they're simply lying on a desk, face-down.)

Ask students to keep phones in their backpacks, Pope recommends, or build them intentionally into the design of a lesson. In either case, don't just stand at the front of the classroom; walk around.
... or open it up as an avenue of inquiry
Garcia sees rich learning potential in active engagement.

"If you have a lot of kids who are playing Fortnite, then that seems like a real opportunity to think about the kinds of connections you can make," Garcia says. "Turn it into an intellectual enterprise."

Have students articulate why the game is important to them. How is it relevant to what they're working on in school? What kinds of things do they think they're learning or not learning from it? What assumptions, what kinds of ideology and ethos are built into the game? What are the representations of men and women? Who voices the characters and do those racialize them in any kind of way?

"Co-constructing the argument with students-that could be some powerful learning they probably aren't getting around other types of products," Garcia says.
Strive for balance
At home, Reeves, Pope and Garcia all support the same classic advice: everything in moderation. Let kids be kids, and unwind from structured activities; promote physical activity, and face-to-face friendship and interaction; protect their sleep; and set clear, age-appropriate screen-time rules.

And don't worry if you feel like you're behind the curve.

"It's never too late," Pope says. "You have a young person living in your home. It's absolutely okay to say, 'Hey, I just read this research; we're going to make some changes.'"

Additional resources

Byron Reeves talks about task-switching and online distractions on the GSE podcast, "School's In," on Stanford Radio/Sirius XM

Antero Garcia talks about the use of technology in the classroom on the GSE podcast, "School's In," on Stanford Radio/Sirius XM

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Stanford experts provide guidance for how parents and teachers can navigate the Fortnite craze

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Much has been written about Fortnite: Battle Royale. The multiplayer shooter game has more than 45 million participants and, thanks to a mobile version, is proving to be a major classroom and home distraction. How should parents and teachers approach it?

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Lesson Plan

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A Collaborative School Newspaper - Teacher-Created Lesson Plan | Common Sense Education

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Check out this lesson from a classroom teacher who uses Common Sense Education. It's part of a huge library of lessons that span grades K-12 and every school subject.

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A Guide to Setting Up an Online School Newspaper

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When this fifth-grade teacher shifted his school newspaper online, he found that students were motivated to produce high-quality work for an authentic audience-and felt more connected as a community.

Like teachers around the country, I enjoy setting up those special events and activities that make kids want to come to school, and I've found that it's hard to run clubs, conduct sports tournaments, and host talent shows out of my den-turned-virtual classroom. It hasn't been easy telling the students over Zoom that many of these won't happen. But how could I tell my amazing fifth-grade journalists that the Dolphin Splash Newspaper Club had to take a break too?

Fortunately, I discovered that I could keep my school newspaper running safely and easily, and the results have been awesome.

An Adaptable Medium-With Many Benefits

Our virtual newspaper became an accessible online location for students to publish their writing-and read work by their peers. It gave them a chance to have their voices heard on topics they really wanted to discuss in a way that felt very much like our physical school newspaper. It also allowed students with various passions and learning styles a chance to shine.

For example, one student wanted to continue her commitment to others, so she began an advice column. Liliana needed an outlet to share her feelings about quarantine, so she wrote op-eds about wearing masks and staying safe. Mauricio, from my colleague's class, updated a popular column called " Random Facts."

The virtual newspaper helped me teach my students literacy in a more practical way, too. I was able to change settings to approve comments, teach the concept of audience, and even create a how-to guide for readers and writers. And because the students were engaging authentically with their friends, they were motivated to learn editing skills.

Important Dos and Don'ts for a Virtual Newspaper
Do:

Meet weekly with your student writers and editors. Our club usually meets for 30 minutes to discuss ideas. I have found that the more agency kids feel over their choice of content, the more it was read. Most contributions to the newspaper begin as class writing projects, so there is minimal extra editing on my part.

You can also extend invitations to students and teachers outside your grade. This helps make the newspaper feel like a part of the school community.

Check the site's controls to make sure your filters are working in regard to unwelcome comments, etc. This may seem off-putting at first, but remember to get a little help from your friends. I have a group of four trustworthy student editors with eyesight better than an eagle's. Once our tailored digital literacy guide made the expectations clear, I noticed that student comments were very encouraging.

Make certain that you have administrator approval and that your school has a universal permission form for internet usage and content. If not, make certain that all submissions have been vetted by the student's teacher for permission.

Do not:

Allow comments without approval or keep the platform public. Remember that if you publish the newspaper on a website, it will be accessible as a URL, and that may feel a bit scary at first. Keep in mind, though, that you control the site and who can comment.

Use students' last names or profile pictures in case the site is found through a secondary link by someone you are not familiar with.

Nothing on a computer these days feels entirely without risk, especially for teachers and students. However, I learned a few things that helped me feel comfortable with the process.

For me, the biggest safety issue was resolved by allowing students to discuss and access the paper through links I made available only to their teachers.

How to Get Your Newspaper Up and Running

I'm sure there are a lot of ways you could tailor a virtual newspaper to your virtual class. Many colleagues I know use platforms like Padlet. I wanted something a bit more suited to our ongoing themes, so I started with a blog-based platform. I recommend WordPress and Wix for their ease and safety controls.
Once you pick the platform you wish to use:
All in all, I found these platforms about as easy to use as Google Classroom. If you aren't sure how to get started, there are many tutorial videos on YouTube (such as this one for WordPress). You may be surprised by how much fun it can be-and how quickly you'll learn.

1. Choose a template or design, and set your controls.

2. Work with students to design it. (Trust me, this is the fun part) Most templates will allow you to create pages for different types of posts or categories of articles.

3. Post work and share links with other classes.

4. Send invitations to the weekly meeting, and solicit work from writers and teachers in different classrooms. You'll be able to give multiple editor permissions if other educators want to help.

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How to Set Up an Online School Newspaper

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When this fifth-grade teacher shifted his school newspaper online, he found that students were motivated to produce high-quality work for an authentic audience-and felt more connected as a community.

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Digital Citizenship: What Students Need To Know

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Digital Citizenship: What Students Need To Know

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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"This is a terrific resource that will help new and experienced teachers update the way they teach writing. Vicki provides concrete suggestions for using technology to teach everything from simple note taking to collaborative essays. Readers will appreciate the practical tools that they can bring back to their own classrooms."

-Todd Whitaker, Professor at Indiana State University and author of the bestselling book What Great Teachers Do Differently

"Vicki Davis is a passionate teacher and blogger who is committed to taking education to the next level. In her new book,　Vicki provides guidance for utilizing the exciting and interactive tools that are transforming the experience of reading and writing in this digital age. With Vicki's encouragement and expertise, teachers will feel comfortable engaging in digital citizenry and eager to extend the invitation to their students.　This book is a must-read for 21st century educators!"

--Angela Maiers, nationally-recognized speaker and consultant on 21st century teaching, and coauthor of The Passion-Driven Classroom

"Full of practical advice and technology guidance, Vicki's new book, Reinventing Writing, crosses all the content areas. The consummate educator, Vicki's experience provides the reader with ideas and tips for students to use technology tools to become better writers, more organized, online collaborators, and ethical users of online information. Each chapter is set-up in a way that gives the reader an introduction, a toolbox of online sites to try, and an FAQ of the common questions and concerns an educator might have. The content of the book would make a wonderful study group or PLC in any school district!"

--Kathy Schrock, award-winning educational technologist and Online Adjunct Professor at Wilkes University

"Hopefully, with this book and other resources, you can learn from the challenges and obstacles experienced by other teachers attempting collaborative projects and create your own successful process. There is no better guide to the process than Vicki Davis and I say that as someone who has interviewed and observed dozens of wiki-using teachers."

--Justin Reich, Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow; Lecturer, MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program; Co-Founder, EdTechTeacher; Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

"Vicki has captured what it means to write in the digital age. The tools, tips and resources she offers will help novice and advanced users alike. And the alignment to the Common Core and reflection questions at the end of each chapter is sure to be a help to every educator."

--Steven W. Anderson, Director Of Instructional Technology for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and Independent Educational Consultant

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Reinventing Writing: The 9 Tools That Are Changing Writing, Teaching, and Learning Forever

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In this much-anticipated book from acclaimed blogger Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher), you'll learn the key shifts in writing instruction necessary to move students forward in today's world. Vicki describes how the elements of traditional writing are being reinvented with cloud-based tools.

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Why Learn History (When It's Already On Your Phone)

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Why Learn History (When It's Already On Your Phone)

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Let's start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious.

With the internet always at our fingertips, what's a teacher of history to do? Sam Wineburg has answers, beginning with this: We definitely can't stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-questions-at-the-back snoozefest we've subjected students to for decades. If we want to educate citizens who can sift through the mass of information around them and separate fact from fake, we have to explicitly work to give them the necessary critical thinking tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows us in Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone), has nothing to do with test prep-style ability to memorize facts. Instead, it's an orientation to the world that we can cultivate, one that encourages reasoned skepticism, discourages haste, and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg draws on surprising discoveries from an array of research and experiments-including surveys of students, recent attempts to update history curricula, and analyses of how historians, students, and even fact checkers approach online sources-to paint a picture of a dangerously mine-filled landscape, but one that, with care, attention, and awareness, we can all learn to navigate.

It's easy to look around at the public consequences of historical ignorance and despair. Wineburg is here to tell us it doesn't have to be that way. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands.

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Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)

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Let's start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive.

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Apps For Making Movies on Mobile Devices

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Apps For Making Movies on Mobile Devices

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Every year at Hollywood award shows, we see fantastic movies celebrated for their rich storytelling and dynamic performances. Your students can become moviemakers, too, thanks to some powerful apps for mobile devices. With these tools, your children can take videos and edit their work to make professional quality movies using iOS devices (iPads and iPhones) and Android tablets.

One good thing about this easy-to-use technology is that students can still use important English language arts skills like writing a narrative, planning a sequential story, and including key details when getting ready to make a movie. These apps can enhance the work that you are doing with children in the classroom and give them room to be creative storytellers.

iMotion HD (iOS: Free, Upgrade Available)

Your students can create a time-lapse or stop-motion film using this video app. iMotion HD lets kids make a movie by combining still photos. They can set this app to take photographs at timed intervals to show elapsed time (like a plant growing or a sunset) or for stop-motion film (using action figures or puppets). With the full version of the app, users can add music and get access to extra export features like uploading their movie straight to YouTube.

PicPlayPost is a video and editing tool that lets users combine videos and still images into a shared frame. With a tap of the screen, the videos will play simultaneously or sequentially, and the still images will be placeholders in the frame. It's a great tool for displaying a combination of pictures as an alternative to a traditional slideshow. Kids can manipulate the style of the frame and add music from their iTunes library to play in the background.

Magisto lets users shoot video from inside the app, edit video saved to their device and create a movie with this footage. Once students select the still images and videos that they want to include, they choose a theme and music. Then the app puts the pieces together. In order to save movies to an album, users will have to set up an account.

iMovie (iOS: $4.99)

With iMovie, students can edit video that they've taken with their iPhone or iPad. This powerful app lets kids create feature films and Hollywood-style trailers using the built-in themes and templates. iMovie lets them add titles, transitions and music as they apply different film techniques like slow motion and panning over still photos. Whether your students dig deep into all of the professional quality features in iMovie or simply scratch the surface, they'll create a fantastic final product.

Students can edit video saved to their device with Andromedia Video Editor. This app lets them organize clips, crop video and even apply the "Ken Burns" filming technique to still images and videos. Users can add transitions to each clip, edit audio, and record a narration using the microphone on the device. After rendering their video, students can share it on multiple platforms.

Have you tried using mobile devices to make movies? How could you see yourself using these tools in the classroom?

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5 Apps for Making Movies on Mobile Devices | Edutopia

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Every year at Hollywood award shows, we see fantastic movies celebrated for their rich storytelling and dynamic performances. Your students can become moviemakers, too, thanks to some powerful apps for mobile devices. With these tools, your children can take videos and edit their work to make professional quality movies using iOS devices (iPads and iPhones) and Android tablets.

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Foster independent thinking and 21st century literacy skills with KQED Media Literacy resources. The ability to think critically about the powerful images, words, sounds, and messages that saturate contemporary culture increases students' chance of success in and outside of the classroom.

Through tools, workshops, and in-class materials and programs, you can encourage your students to ask key questions about who creates media messages, why, and to what effect.

General Media Literacy Resources

The following are tools to support the teaching of media literacy within the subject-specific classroom:

Social Studies/Language Arts

Professional Development Workshops on Media Literacy

Invite KQED Education to guest lecture on media literacy in your education course! We offer collaborative workshops to introduce activities and strategies which enable educators to incorporate media analysis and production skills into the curriculum.

Sample Workshop: Integrating Media Literacy Concepts into the Curriculum
Learn the seven concepts of media literacy, and understand how students can become active media viewers and learn to think critically about image and sound.

Other Resources

Americans increasingly recognize that the U.S. education system can and should do more to prepare our young people to succeed in the rapidly evolving 21st century. Skills such as global literacy, problem solving, innovation, and creativity have become critical in today's increasingly interconnected workforce and society. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills supports this effort.

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Foster independent thinking and 21st century literacy skills with KQED Media Literacy resources. The ability to think critically about the powerful images, words, sounds, and messages that saturate contemporary culture increases students' chance of success in and outside of the classroom.

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The New Media Literacies constitute the core cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in our new media landscape. We call them “literacies,” but they change the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to one of community involvement.

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The white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) identifies the kinds of participatory practices youth are engaged in today, and draws up a provisionary list of the skills these practices demonstrate. In the video below, members of the NML team share their thoughts and perspectives on the skills we call the new media literacies.

One of our key goals is to stop focusing quite so much on "do kids have computers in their classroom?" and start focusing more on "do kids have the basic social skills and cultural competencies so that when they do get computers in their classroom, they can participate fully?" Many educators assume that (1) students can only begin learning the skills they need to use technology if they actually have the technology in their classroom, and (2) that putting technology in the classroom is a quick fix that will solve any classroom's problems. Neither of these assumptions, we argue, are good.

It's not that it isn't important that students have computers in their classrooms. Students with access to technology will typically be better at using technology than students who don't. But just putting computers in classrooms doesn't mean that they will be used well. Frequently, computers are used as an appendage to a physical library or as a word processing tool. These are good uses for computers, but they don't really teach students about the participatory culture that exists online - the participatory culture that they will be expected to take part in as adults. In fact, many students are already engaging with participatory culture, and they're bored by uses of computers that don't incorporate it!

The New Media Literacies constitute the core cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in our new media landscape. We call them "literacies," but they change the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to one of community involvement. They build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom. If these New Media Literacies are learned - and they can be learned without computers in the classroom - they can form the building blocks for students' participation in new media.

Play: the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving. Having a strong sense of play can be helpful when you pick up a new piece of technology that you've never used before, when you're trying to write an essay and your outline isn't functioning as you'd hoped, and when you're designing anything at all, from a dress to a web page to a concert's program.

Performance: the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery. Being able to move fluidly and effectively between roles can help you when you're exploring online communities, when you're trying to decide what actions are ethical, and when you're shuffling between home, work and school.

Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes. Being able to interpret, manipulate and create simulations can help you understand innumerable complex systems, like ecologies and computer networks - and make you better at playing video games!

Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content. Being able to remix media content (and knowing when doing so is appropriate) can help you understand literary works, music, and art; it can also help lead you to a deeper understanding of copyright and cultural clashes.

Multitasking: the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Being a good multitasker is required in our new media landscape - and that includes learning when it isn't good to multitask.

Distributed Cognition: the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities. That can mean something as simple as using a ruler or calculator, or something as complex as efficiently using Wikipedia on your iPhone to access information on the fly.

Collective Intelligence: the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal. This ability is key to open source projects. Being able to pool knowledge with others can allow us to solve challenges far more complex than the individual mind can process.

Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources. If you're worried about your students using Wikipedia at inappropriate times and taking everything they read on the internet as gospel truth, you're worried that they aren't exercising good judgment. But judgment also includes knowing when sources are appropriate for your use: for instance, sometimes Wikipedia might be the appropriate resource to use.

Transmedia Navigation: the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple media. Anyone who needs to do research needs a good understanding of transmedia navigation - how to follow threads through video, still photography, written work, music, online sources etc.

Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information. Writing something isn't enough without the ability to circulate it to the communities where it will matter.

Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms. We now need to know how to live in multiple communities - from the hyperlocal to the global and from those composed of people like us to those consisting of people very different from us.

Visualization - the ability to translate information into visual models and understand the information visual models are communicating. VIsualization has become a key way we cope with large data sets and make sense of the complexity of our environment.

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The white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) identifies the kinds of participatory practices youth are engaged in today, and draws up a provisionary list of the skills these practices demonstrate.

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Avel Chuklanov / Unsplash

In early June 2020, Amazon Studios announced a series order from "Parenthood" and "Friday Night Lights" writer and producer Jason Katim. Entitled "On the Spectrum," this 30-minute comedy-drama will follow three 20-something roommates who are on the autism spectrum and navigating life's challenges together.

Most importantly, the television series will feature three actually autistic actors: Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien, and Albert Rutecki.

"Having a 23-year-old son on the spectrum, it is deeply personal for me to get to tell this unique story of what it's like to come of age as someone with autism," said Katim in an interview with Deadline.

In the past, I have discussed in length the importance of neurodivergent representation in the workforce and why employers should prioritize hiring neurodivergent talent, and this extends to neurodivergent representation in the media as well.

The truth is, television has not always represented autism in an accurate light and often leans heavily on stereotypes. On shows like "The Good Doctor," the main character, Dr. Shaun Murphy, is an autistic surgeon and has savant-like abilities, a trait only 10 percent of autistic people possess. Storylines featuring autistic characters also often focus on the world's view of them or on the difficulties that neurotypical family members have with accepting their neurodivergent children or siblings, instead of accurately portraying life from an autistic person's perspective.

"Since autism is a spectrum, not every character has represented every single autistic individual, especially autistic people who are nonverbal or do not have savant-like skills," writes Andrea Doten. "But just like representation for POC and LGBTQ people, increasing the number of autistic characters has helped bring more awareness and acceptance of the autistic community over the past several years."

Scientific research supports Doten's theory: watching television shows showcasing autistic characters increases viewers' interest in autism. According to a 2019 study by Stern and Barnes, participants who watched the first 28 minutes of "The Good Doctor" pilot episode were both more interested in learning more about autism and had more positive views of autistic individuals than those who watched a lecture about autism.

Neurodivergent representation in the media helps end stigmas surrounding autism; but, in order to overcome stereotypes (i.e. "autistic individuals cannot express emotions"), it is imperative that these neurodivergent characters are accurate representations and not just caricatures of neurodivergent individuals.

The most effective way to accomplish this is simple: book neurodivergent talent to portray neurodivergent characters. Historically, neurodivergent characters on shows like "The Good Doctor," "Atypical," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Bones," have been portrayed by neurotypical actors.

"Actors who play autistic characters, they haven't walked in our shoes because they don't have it themselves," said Kayla Cromer, who portrays Matilda in Freeform's Everything's Gonna Be Okay. "So by incorporating parts of myself into the role, it just makes it more authentic."

In addition to lending her personal experiences to provide an authentic performance, Cromer has also been able to connect with others who find hope and encouragement in her role.

"Hearing them tell their stories, how they're on the spectrum and giving them advice, it can be overwhelming at times, but it's just so rewarding," said Cromer. "So many people say, 'You are giving us a voice. I've waited so many years for an actor on the spectrum to be playing an on-the-spectrum role.'"

If awareness, education, and acceptance is our goal - and it should be - neurodivergent stories should be told by neurodivergent individuals. With the hiring of Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien, and Albert Rutecki for "On the Spectrum," it looks like Hollywood has begun to take notice.

Even if you are not the one making the casting decisions, there are ways you can support neurodivergent talent in your life. When looking for new books to bring with you to the beach or pool this summer, consider these titles by neurodivergent writers:

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Why media portraying neurodivergent characters need to source neurodivergent talent.

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In early June 2020, Amazon Studios announced a series order from "Parenthood" and "Friday Night Lights" writer and producer Jason Katim. Entitled "On the Spectrum," this 30-minute comedy-drama will follow three 20-something roommates who are on the autism spectrum and navigating life's challenges together.

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Once considered a childhood rite of passage, bullying lingers well into adulthood. Bullies and victims alike are at risk for psychiatric problems such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide when they become adults, reported a study partially funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that was published in the April issue of JAMA Psychiatry.

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National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

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Bullying Exerts Psychiatric Effects Into Adulthood

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GLSEN Lesson Plans for an Inclusive Classroom

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GLSEN Lesson Plans for an Inclusive Classroom

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Implementing GLSEN’s free lesson plans and resources can help students develop the skills to interact in our diverse world with greater respect, empathy, and understanding.

Incorporate our lessons, found below, to:

Foster respect and understanding

Promote LGBTQ visibility and affirmation

Improve school climate

Build leadership

Encourage ally behavior

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Supportive educators save students' lives. Having just one visibly supportive educator in a school can ensure that LGBTQ students feel safe, welcomed, and encouraged to learn.

Show your support by displaying a Safe Space sticker and poster in your classroom. Learn how to discuss bullying, gender roles, or family diversity with elementary-aged students. Include positive representation of LGBTQ people in your curriculum. Inspire your students of all ages and all identities to be kind, support others, and speak up when they see bullying.

GLSEN's education team has created educator guides for each of our days of action, along with other resources for increasing LGBTQ visibility and affirmation in any curriculum. While GLSEN celebrates these days of action nationally at specific times during the year, all of our lessons, resources, and activities found here can be implemented at any time.

Check out the resources in the sections below for specific guides and tools related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more!

Join the thousands of educators who are helping GLSEN change schools across the country.

As a member of the GLSEN Educator Network, you'll receive emails that highlight GLSEN's resources and provide up-to-date information on GLSEN research. You will also receive current information on LGBTQ events and celebrations to help you plan for and implement a more inclusive curriculum, including direct information and new resources for GLSEN days of action like No Name-Calling Week.

Register to receive free GSA & school resources.

Join a national movement creating inclusive schools for all.

Educator Guides

Looking for ways to support Ally Week, No Name-Calling Week or the Day of Silence? Interested in finding ways to bring LGBTQ-visibility into your curriculum? You've come to the right place!

GLSEN's education team has created educator guides for each of our Days of Action, along with other resources for increasing LGBTQ visibility and affirmation into any curriculum. While GLSEN celebrates these Days of Action nationally at specific times throughout the year, the lessons, resources, and activities found here can be implemented at any time.

Check out the resources below for specific guides and tool related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more! Ready to supplement your curriculum? Explore our LGBTQ-Inclusive and Bullying, Bias & Diversity lesson plans.

Lesson Plans

Implementing GLSEN's free lesson plans and resources can help students develop the skills to interact in our diverse world with greater respect, empathy, and understanding.

Incorporate our lessons, found below, to:

Foster respect and understanding

Promote LGBTQ visibility and affirmation

Improve school climate

Build leadership

Encourage ally behavior

Ready for LGBTQ-specific lessons? Explore GLSEN's LGBTQ-inclusive curricular resources.

Teachers can be that figure you look up to. And when they are accepting of you, it means the world to you. To know that you're ok and that they are there for you. - Ximena, 9th grade

When educators are visibly supportive of LGBTQ students, everyone benefits. Through our Chapter-based Professional Development program, GLSEN offers tools and resources to thousands of educators who seek to make their classrooms and schools a safe place for all students. Based on 25+ years of experience and research, GLSEN boasts a robust educator training program with a series of modules curated to cover an array of topics suitable for a diverse range of audiences.

GLSEN research shows that the presence of supportive educators can have a significant positive impact on LGBTQ students' academic achievement, as well as on their psychological well-being and long-term educational aspirations. GLSEN Professional Development aims to empower educators to act in allyship with LGBTQ students.

Our Professional Development Workshops will assist educators in building the following skills:

Knowledge of LGBTQ student experiences in school

Understanding what allyship can provide for LGBTQ students

Awareness of the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ language and behavior in schools

Willingness and ability to intervene when anti-LGBTQ name-calling and bullying occurs

Willingness and ability to utilize curriculum inclusive of LGBTQ people, history and themes

Willingness to advocate for the rights of LGBTQ students and ensure safe schools for all

Access to resources and referral

NOTE: For GLSEN Professional Development Workshops, the term "educator" includes, but is not limited to: Current or future K-12 Teachers, Administrators, Counselors, Paraprofessionals, Librarians, Nurses, Bus Drivers, District Staff, School Resource Officers, Cafeteria Workers, etc
To bring GLSEN Professional Development to your school, please email educators@glsen.org.

Safe Space Kit

Educators like you can make a big difference for LGBTQ students. Just one gesture can change a student's life for the better: Put up a Safe Space Sticker in your classroom to start a conversation about acceptance and affirming LGBTQ identity.

GLSEN's Safe Space Kit provides you with practical ways to transform your school into a safer space for everyone, particularly LGBTQ students, by supporting and educating students, sharing your knowledge with other educators and advocating for school-wide changes. The Safe Space Kit not only guides you through making an assessment of your school's climate and recommends affirming policies and best practices, but also outlines strategies that you may use to advocate for change, including posting a Safe Space Sticker or Safe Space Poster in your classroom or office. You can purchase them in the GLSEN Shop, or download digital copies for free

GLSEN Chapters also offer professional development opportunities that include our Safe Space Kit and support educators in creating safer and more affirming learning environments.

School Year Calendar

The school year is full of opportunities to participate in GLSEN events, address LGBTQ and social justice issues, learn about diverse communities, and take action to create safer and more affirming schools for all.

Use this calendar to schedule your GSA meetings, lesson plans, student events, and staff development workshops, and as part of your ongoing diversity, equity, and LGBTQ-inclusion efforts. Follow us @GLSEN on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we'll be sharing related resources and lesson plans for these events throughout the year.

Misgendering, Gender Terminology & Pronouns

Misgendering hurts. Support educators by teaching students how to respect each others' pronouns and bringing awareness to a wider range of gender terminology.

As a class and in small groups, students watch a video about pronouns, have a conversation about pronouns, and discuss misgendering. As a class, students discuss ways to combat misgendering and how they can make sure the gender pronouns of all students are respected.

For all of us, learning an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum can help us better understand our world and our differences. For LGBTQ students in particular, it can mean feeling safer at school and hearing homophobic and transphobic remarks less frequently, according to GLSEN research. Looking back at history is the easiest way to get LGBTQ-inclusivity into any curriculum. That's why we're sharing our resources below, which include an interactive timeline and coloring book as well as many other classroom resources suitable for a range of students ages K-12.

Recognizing these benefits, former GLSEN Chapter leader Rodney Wilson, with the support of GLSEN's founder Kevin Jennings and many others, founded LGBTQ History Month in October 1994. While you can use these resources every October, they're perfect for use all year, so that students see the benefits year round.

A great resource you can use to learn and teach about LGBTQ history is Making Gay History, the critically acclaimed and award-winning podcast that brings LGBTQ history to life through the voices of the people who lived it. Listen to the podcasts below to hear about the lives and legacies of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were participants in the New York Stonewall riots in 1969.

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Supportive educators save students' lives. Having just one visibly supportive educator in a school can ensure that LGBTQ students feel safe, welcomed, and encouraged to learn. Show your support by displaying a Safe Space sticker and poster in your classroom. Learn how to discuss bullying, gender roles, or family diversity with elementary-aged students.

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Common Sense: Teacher Guide to Cyberbullying

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Common Sense: Teacher Guide to Cyberbullying

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What is cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying is the use of digital media (such as apps, text messages, and websites) to intimidate, upset, or harm someone. It includes repeatedly sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, or mean content about someone else on purpose.

Usually, with cyberbullying, there are other people who see cyberbullying happen. In these situations, people can be bystanders, allies, or upstanders.

A bystander observes the conflict or unacceptable behavior but does not take part in it.

An ally is someone who responds to the bullying situation by supporting the person being bullied (checking in with them, being a friend to them, etc.).

An upstander tries to stop the bullying by directly confronting the person who is doing the bullying or by telling a trusted adult.

Cyberbullying differs from face-to-face bullying in several key ways. For one, it can feel harder to escape because it can happen anywhere, anytime. It's also harder to detect because so much of kids' digital media use is not monitored by adults. At the same time, cyberbullying can also be very public: Large numbers of people online can see what's happening and even gang up on the target. Though the target is usually exposed publicly, the people doing the cyberbullying can hide who they are by posting anonymously or using pseudonyms. And since cyberbullying isn't face-to-face, the one doing the bullying may not see or even understand the implications of their actions.

What Forms Can Cyberbullying Take?

Unfortunately, cyberbullying can take many forms. As popular social media apps for young people shift and proliferate, so have the ways kids can harass each other-or become victims themselves. Spreading rumors, sending hateful messages, or sharing embarrassing materials can occur across platforms and devices, but there are some other specific forms of cyberbullying to be aware of:

Catfishing: Someone sets up a fictional persona online to compromise a victim in various ways, often exploiting a victim's emotions. The perpetrator's goals may be to lure them into a relationship or to intentionally upset a victim, among other reasons.

Cyberflashing: When someone receives an unsolicited sexually graphic image, they've been cyberflashed. This can occur on peer-to-peer Wi-Fi networks or Bluetooth Airdrop, in or outside of school.

Ghosting: When people cut off online contact and stop responding, they might be ghosting. Refusing to answer someone's messages can actually be a way of communicating a shift or upheaval among a group of friends. Often, instead of ever addressing the issue head-on, people will just ignore the targeted person.

Griefing: There are people who harass or irritate you in multiplayer video games. They kill your character on purpose, steal your game loot, or harass you in chat. Repeated behavior like that is called "griefing."

Hate pages: On platforms like Instagram, teens may create fake accounts to harass victims, posting unflattering photos of their target, exposing secrets, or sharing screenshots of texts from people saying mean things. It's hard to trace who created the account, and the people doing the bullying can simply create a new "hate" page if one is shut down or removed. Sometimes, these anonymous accounts may be collections focused on rumors or other malicious materials targeting students schoolwide.

Outing: This occurs when someone reveals someone's gender identity or sexual orientation without their consent. What makes this particularly malicious is the risk this may pose for teens who report higher levels of mental health struggles and are at greater risk for self-harm.

Note that kids and teens probably use all kinds of terminology to describe the digital drama or harassment that's happening, so it's best to just ask questions than to use specific terms.

How common is cyberbullying?

Reported data on how many kids experience cyberbullying can vary depending on the age of kids surveyed and how cyberbullying is defined. According to a 2022 Pew Research report on teens and cyberbullying, nearly half (46%) of teens reported experiencing at least one type of cyberbullying, and 28% have experienced multiple types, which represents a steady uptick over the last 15 years.

A summary of research by the Cyberbullying Research Center on cyberbullying in middle and high school from 2007 to 2021 indicated that, on average, 29% of students had been targets of cyberbullying. Nearly 16% of students admitted to cyberbullying others.

Yet not all groups of teens are experiencing cyberbullying equally, as some kids are more vulnerable than others. The Common Sense study " Social Media, Social Life" also found that girls are more likely than boys to experience it. A separate study showed that kids with a disability, with obesity, or who are LGBTQ are more likely to be cyberbullied than other kids.

Even if kids aren't the target of cyberbullying (and the majority aren't), chances are high they've witnessed it, since it often happens online and publicly. Common Sense reports that 23% of teens have tried to help someone who has been cyberbullied, such as by talking with the person who was cyberbullied, reporting it to adults, or posting positive stuff about the person being cyberbullied.

How can I tell if a student is being cyberbullied?

Be aware of your students' emotional state. Do they seem depressed? Fearful? Distracted? Pay attention to what's happening for students socially at lunchtime, in the hallways, or in other areas of your school campus. Has their friend group changed? Do you sense a conflict between students? Are you overhearing talk about "drama" or "haters" (two words kids might use to describe cyberbullying situations)? Don't be afraid to check in with students directly about what's going on. And reach out to their support networks, including parents or caregivers, the school counselor, a coach, or other teachers.

When and how should I intervene in a cyberbullying situation?

Obviously, cyberbullying is something to take seriously. At the same time, it's important to remember that, depending on their ages, kids are still developing skills like empathy, self-regulation, and how to communicate respectfully online. These situations can be learning opportunities for everyone involved.

School, district, and/or state policies might determine what actions you take once you've verified that cyberbullying has in fact occurred. Sometimes the recommended response is different depending on whether the bullying occurred on a school-issued device, and whether it happened outside of school hours or during the school day. Be sure to involve the students' families, school administrators, and counselor as appropriate, to ensure the intervention is effective and follows policy.

Here are a few resources to support teachers and schools in responding to cyberbullying:

What's my responsibility as a teacher in preventing cyberbullying?

As educators, it's our responsibility to teach students how to use digital media in respectful and safe ways. This includes helping kids learn how to identify, respond to, and avoid cyberbullying. Given the demands on teachers to meet school, district, and state goals, it can be a challenge to figure out where these lessons fit into the school day. Fortunately, as technology becomes part of every aspect of our lives, including how we teach and learn, more schools and districts are giving teachers the time and resources to prioritize these skills. Here are a few ways to approach cyberbullying prevention in the classroom:

Promote a positive and safe classroom culture. Whether or not you have technology in the classroom, setting norms of respectful communication sends a message to your students about what is and isn't acceptable. Find ways to demonstrate that your classroom is a safe, emotionally caring environment. Provide resources in the classroom to help students identify, respond to, and avoid cyberbullying. This could be tips on how to respond to cyberbullying (for elementary school or middle and high school) or the phone number for the Crisis Text Line.

Embrace teachable "dig cit" moments. Step up when you encounter a teachable moment related to cyberbullying or respectful online communication. Encourage students to pay attention to "red flag moments"-when something happens on digital media that makes them feel uncomfortable, worried, sad, or anxious. Explain to students the three ways they can and should respond if they witness cyberbullying: support the target of the bullying (be an ally); try to stop the cyberbullying (be an upstander); and/or tell a trusted adult (report it). It may not be part of your lesson plan, and it may set you off track for a bit, but every time you reinforce anti-cyberbullying messages, you're doing the critical work of cyberbullying prevention. And as hard as it may be to admit, ignoring these teachable moments also sends a message your students will remember.

Incorporate lessons on cyberbullying into your existing curriculum. Find connections to the content you're already teaching and make time to address cyberbullying directly. From setting norms of online communication to using historical examples of propaganda and hate speech to discussing a bullying situation in a novel you're reading, the possible connections to cyberbullying can be made with a little planning. And since it's possible someone in class is dealing with cyberbullying, it's helpful to stay attuned and sensitive to students.

Advocate for a school- or district-wide digital citizenship program. The most effective cyberbullying prevention strategy has to involve the whole community. A fully integrated digital citizenship program gives teachers the time and resources to tackle these topics head-on, provides kids with consistent and frequent opportunities to build their skills, and supports families as they reinforce the messages at home.

What lesson plans and classroom resources are available to address cyberbullying?

The Common Sense K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum teaches students about the effects of cyberbullying on both themselves and their larger communities. They are encouraged to take the active role of upstander and build positive, supportive online communities, and they can learn how to cultivate empathy, compassion, and courage to combat negative interactions online.

Grades K-5:

Grades 6-8:

Grades 9-12:

How can teachers work with families to identify and prevent cyberbullying?

The first step is to communicate with your students' families about your expectations in the classroom and explain the skills you're helping students learn related to positive, responsible media use. When parents are informed and on board, they're more likely to reinforce the messages at home.

Since families often look to schools for guidance on dealing with cyberbullying, you can offer them the latest advice and resources on the topic. Spark a conversation by sending home these printable Family Tips or handing them out at meetings with parents and caregivers. You can also share resources in a classroom newsletter, on your class website or social feed, or at your next parent event.

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Teachers' Essential Guide to Cyberbullying Prevention | Common Sense Education

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What is cyberbullying? How common is it? And what can teachers do about it? Get advice and resources to support your students.

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Last year, an English teacher at my school came to me with an all-too-common concern about an essay a student named Kyle had just turned in. The teacher's 10th grade class had just finished op-ed essays on a topic of their choice, and Kyle had chosen to examine the economic impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy. But in his submitted draft every source in his bibliography-and I do mean every-leaned toward one political bias, and sometimes quite heavily.

"It happened again," lamented my colleague.

Despite directing the class to consult disparate points of view and guiding them to databases and websites constructed to provide point and counterpoint arguments, Kyle hadn't shown any effort in entertaining other viewpoints. And while Kyle's essay was the most egregious on this front, he was by no means the only one in this camp. Many students start the research process by proclaiming: "I know what I'm going to say!" and seek only sources that validate that pre-formed position.

Students were failing the most central tenet of media literacy, and turning in another set of essays reinforcing bias confirmation. In some cases, they weren't even aware they were doing it.

"How do we help them recognize when their bias is interfering with their understanding?" my colleague asked.

As a library media specialist, I thought I knew the answer. If we only react after the fact, students often meet us with defensiveness. But there is another path. "We need to get out ahead of it," I responded.

Confronting Invisible Bias

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face when accessing information is confronting our biases before we are able to unpack the opinions and insights of other people. Often these biases are unconscious or implicit, meaning we might not even be aware we have them.

But these implicit biases have real implications, and educators are no less immune than students. Research has already shown, for instance, that adults see black girls as less innocent than white peers, even before they meet them. Another study found that white teachers were 30 percent less likely than black teachers to predict a black student of theirs would graduate college.

Until we become aware of our biases, and how these attitudes and opinions emerge through the language we use, we can fall into what's known as the bias confirmation trap-we see opinion with which we agree as fact and information with which we disagree as false.

Nurturing self-awareness in our students and guiding them to see how their biases interact with their information acquisition is a fundamental element to helping them develop the media literacy and communication skills essential for civil discourse. Academics and educators like Robin DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility," challenge us with their findings to grow the self-awareness necessary to promote cross-racial dialogue and foster socially just schools and communities.

Sounds daunting, right? Maybe not. Bias is a part of any source of information; the issue is the degree of transparency. When a text is laden with super-charged words and images, the bias is obvious. When the language is more subtle, we are more inclined to miss it. So when working with my students, we tackle the subtle texts. The experience with Kyle and his classmates prompted a new realization for us. Before we tackle the texts, we have to face ourselves. So I developed a lesson I hoped would make that clearer.

Creating Room for Debate

Since students were already working with op-ed essays, I curated some models of well-written ones on topics I thought would be meaningful to the class. To do that, I consulted one of my go-to resources for editorial content, the New York Times " Room for Debate " section and found a collection of short opinion essays on equity in education. I selected one by Prudence Carter.

From her essay I excerpted one paragraph that, to me, seemed particularly potent. From that paragraph I removed some of the descriptive words: verbs and adjectives, mostly. When I distributed the document to a class, a student immediately asked:

"Are we doing Mad Libs today?"

Here is what the exercise looked like:

Admittedly, it does look like Mad Libs, those fill-in-the-blank joke sheets we loved as kids. That was intentional-so that students would have a basic sense of what they were supposed to do. But this exercise is a little different. First, the goal is to make the paragraph cogent, to choose words that make sense in context. And second, they needed to do it alone, without discussion. (If you have a moment, feel free to follow along and add your own words.)

The class buzzed through the first two blanks, easily completing the ideas. With the third blank they started to slow down. Some started to struggle. They asked questions like, "Can I use a phrase instead of a word?" I said a short phrase was OK, but that all that had been removed in each blank space was one word. The goal, I told them, is to get the paragraph to make sense, not guess what the author said.

When most of them had finished, I said it was time to move to round two: partner work. I directed them to work in pairs or groups of three. This time they needed to discuss the task and agree on the words that filled each blank. Again, they cruised through the first few, easily agreeing about what the missing words could be. And then it got harder.

As students began to find differences in the words they were using, they started trying to convince each other why their word was better. When completing the statement: "Equitably funded schools run by ___ educators," some students chose the adjective "qualified" and others chose "passionate" and still others chose "caring." Organically, they were discussing the subtle connotations of language. Some groups got really stuck and had to skip some parts; others put two words in a spot and then discovered that how they completed the next blank was dependent on which word they chose for the previous one.

Rarely can I say that experiences I plan for my students go exactly how I anticipate. This one did. These students-many of whom had been classmates for years, who lived in similar neighborhoods and took multiple classes together-were starting to see that language impacts meaning, and that their choice of words indicated subtle and even unconscious beliefs. Those they may have presumed viewed the world just as they did actually had different points of view, and-this is important-things they thought were fact might actually be opinion. Students had picked up on all this and we hadn't even gotten to the best part of the lesson.

Next, I asked the students to focus on one sentence from the paragraph:

and share how they completed it. Here are some examples from the students.

We drilled into their words starting with "struggle," "try" and "attempt." "What do these words imply? What do these words say about the people doing the action?" I asked them. The students observed that these words insinuated difficulty, obstacles and likely failure. Some thought they conveyed a lack of will or commitment to the task. Ultimately, they agreed that these words implied a lack of agency.

Then we focused on the second words: "racing," "rising," "moving." Here the students noted progress, accomplishment, success and action. Certainly the way the statement was completed gave the "others" power and agency that the "they" in the sentence did not have.

Of course the final step was to compare their word choice with the original author's:

"Whoa," said one student.

"That's really different," said another.

I invited them to explain why.

Carter, the original author, actually gives agency to the people my students described as "struggling," "attempting," and "trying." Not only did she give them agency but by saying "they work," she implies that they have skill, purpose and goals. And by describing others as "zooming" she implies privilege. And there, in that one phrase, is material for a substantive and meaningful discussion of implicit bias.

Kyle and his class took home a lesson about how our place, our upbringing, our background and our media exposure contributes to our world view. Unless we confront the bias, we can not overcome it.

Making a Conscious Choice

If we consider the language we have used to tell our history and we choose to use different words, we are inviting different points of view into our understanding of the world; we are broadening our perspective and gaining empathy with diverse people.

I have replicated this "Mad Libs" lesson many times with both students and adults. No one has ever completed the sentences the way Prudence Carter originally wrote them. Every time I guide people through this lesson, the conversation about the role bias plays in our lives and our learning is deep and thoughtful.

Some people are struck by the need to read completely-not just skim a headline or abstract in a media feed. Others notice how limiting it is to describe an issue as binary, as in having only two sides. And still others realize that bias is inherent in all of us. For everyone, what resonates is the implicit weight of words.

The cool thing, to me, about this lesson is that the same people can do it over again with a different text and continue to learn about themselves and how their unconscious and implicit biases affect their worldview, slowly stripping out ingrained habits of bias confirmation. And then, they can consciously choose to expand their perspective.

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Everyone Has Invisible Bias. This Lesson Shows Students How to Recognize It. - EdSurge News

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Last year, an English teacher at my school came to me with an all-too-common concern about an essay a student named Kyle had just turned in. The teacher's 10th grade class had just finished op-ed essays on a topic of their choice, and Kyle had chosen to examine the economic impact of illegal immigration on the U.S.

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Once kids go online, their chances of finding cyberbullies, haters, and trolls is, sadly, quite high. Find age-specific guidelines, videos, and articles to help with tough conversations -- whether your kid is a bully or is being bullied. We answer all your cyberbullying questions, offering age-appropriate advice, school resources, and more from parents and exper

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Parenting, Media, and Everything in Between

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Get advice about Cyberbullying from Common Sense Media editors.

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"Unplugging from devices doesn’t stop us from experiencing our lives through their lenses, frames, and formats. We are only ever tourists in the land of no technology, our visas valid for a day or a week or a year, and we travel there with the same eyes and ears that we use in our digital homeland. That is why so many of those who unplug return so quickly to speak about their sojourns"

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The fifth annual National Day of Unplugging took place earlier this month. The aim of the event, organized by the nonprofit Reboot, is "to help hyperconnected people of all backgrounds to embrace the ancient ritual of a day of rest." From sundown on Friday, March 7th, until sundown on Saturday, March 8th, participants abstained from using technology, unplugging themselves from their phones and tablets, computers and televisions.

Many submitted self-portraits to Reboot holding explanations of why they chose to unplug: "to be more connected," "to reset," "to spend more time with my family," "so my eye will stop twitching," "to bring back the beauty of life," "to be in the moment." Not so long ago, those very reasons (except, maybe, for the eye-twitching) would have explained why many took to the devices that they were now unplugging: to connect with old friends, to talk with family across the world, to see beautiful places and curious creatures through photographs and documentaries, to relax for a few moments with music.

But how quickly the digital age turned into the age of technological anxiety, with our beloved devices becoming something to fear, not enjoy. What sex was for the Puritans, technology has become for us. We've focussed our collective anxiety on digital excess, and reconnecting with the "real" world around us represents one effort to control it.

And yet the "real" world, like the "real" America, is an insidious idea. It suggests that the selves we are online aren't authentic, and that the relationships that we forge in digital spaces aren't meaningful. This is odd, because some of our closest friends and most significant professional connections are people we've only ever met on the Internet, and a third of recently married couples met online. It's odder still because we not only love and socialize online but live and work there, too. Is it any less real when we fall in love and break up over Gchat than when we get fired over e-mail and then find a new job on LinkedIn?

I was struck last year when Pope Benedict XVI, after he started tweeting, delivered a message on social networks. "The exchange of information can become true communication, links ripen into friends, and connections facilitate communion," the Pope said. He added that, with effort, "it is not only ideas and information that are shared but, ultimately, our very selves." Perhaps most surprisingly, the Pope argued, "The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual world but is part of the daily experience of many people, especially the young."

In that way, the unplugging movement is the latest incarnation of an ageless effort to escape the everyday, to retreat from the hustle and bustle of life in search of its still core. Like Thoreau ignoring the locomotive that passed by his cabin at Walden Pond or the Anabaptists rejecting electricity, members of the unplugging movement scorn technology in the hope of finding the authenticity and the community that they think it obscures.

Unplugging seems motivated by two contradictory concerns: efficiency and enlightenment. Those who seek efficiency rarely want to change their lives, only to live more productively; rather than eliminating technology, they seek to regulate their use of it through Internet-blocking programs like Freedom and Anti-Social, or through settings like Do Not Disturb. The hours that they spend off the Internet aren't about purifying the soul but about streamlining the mind. The enlightenment crowd, by contrast, abstains from technology in search of authenticity, forsaking e-mail for handwritten letters, replacing phone calls with face-to-face conversations, cherishing moments instead of capturing them with cameras. Both crowds are drawn to events like the Day of Unplugging, and some members even pay premiums to vacation at black-hole resorts that block the Internet and attend retro retreats that ban electronics. Many become evangelists of such technological abstinence, taking to social media and television, ironically, to share insights from their time in the land of innocence.

It's a priggish impulse that I indulged for years; despite enjoying much of what the Internet had to offer, I fancied myself a Luddite because I refused to create a Facebook account. I threw many stones from my glass house, criticizing my friends' digital connections and their endless attention to feeds and posts and pokes. And yet, while I didn't poke, I did text; I didn't write posts, but I did send e-mails.

In the same antediluvian era, I happened to be travelling abroad, without a computer or a mobile phone, when my grandmother died. When I was finally able to read my e-mail, two days later, and received notice of her death, I was thankful to learn of it, and even more thankful for the airplane that carried me home in time for her funeral, where I could be with family and friends for the service. At that moment, I was also grateful for the very digital devices that I had scorned. When I saw relatives at the service, they wondered why I wasn't blogging about my adventures or posting more pictures online. Not a single one had received the postcards that I'd mailed from overseas; those would arrive weeks later.

Unplugging from devices doesn't stop us from experiencing our lives through their lenses, frames, and formats. We are only ever tourists in the land of no technology, our visas valid for a day or a week or a year, and we travel there with the same eyes and ears that we use in our digital homeland. That is why so many of those who unplug return so quickly to speak about their sojourns. The ostentatious announcements of leave-taking ("I'm #digitaldetoxing for a few days, so you won't see any tweets from me!" "Leaving Facebook for a while to be in the world!") are inevitably followed by vainglorious returns, excited exclamations having turned into desperate questions ("Sorry to be away from Twitter. #Digitaldetox for three WHOLE days. Miss me?" "Back online. What did I miss?").

This is why it's strange to think of these unplugging events as anything like detox: the goal isn't really abstinence but a return to these technologies with a renewed appreciation of how to use them. Few who unplug really want to surrender their citizenship in the land of technology; they simply want to travel outside it on temporary visas. Those who truly leave the land of technology are rarely heard from again, partly because such a way of living is so incommensurable. The cloistered often surrender the ability to speak to those of us who rely so heavily on technology. I was mindful of this earlier this month when I reviewed a book about a community of Poor Clares in Rockford, Illinois. The nuns live largely without phones or the Internet; they rarely leave their monastery. Their oral histories are available only because a scholar spent six years interviewing them, organizing their testimonies so that outsiders might have access. The very terms of their leaving the plugged-in world mean that their lives and wisdom aren't readily accessible to those of us outside their cloister. We cannot understand their presence, only their absence.

That is why, I think, the Day of Unplugging is such a strange thing. Those who unplug have every intention of plugging back in. This sort of stunt presents an experiment, with its results determined beforehand; one finds exactly what one expects to find: never more, often less. It's one of the reasons that the unplugging movement has attracted such vocal criticism from the likes of Nathan Jurgenson, Alexis Madrigal, and Evgeny Morozov. If it takes unplugging to learn how better to live plugged in, so be it. But let's not mistake such experiments in asceticism for a sustainable way of life. For most of us, the modern world is full of gadgets and electronics, and we'd do better to reflect on how we can live there than to pretend we can live elsewhere.
Photograph courtesy of the National Day of Unplugging.

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The fifth annual National Day of Unplugging took place earlier this month. The aim of the event, organized by the nonprofit Reboot, is "to help hyperconnected people of all backgrounds to embrace the ancient ritual of a day of rest."

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"I refuse to accept that the only good response to an imperfect technology is to abandon it. We need more specific criticisms than the ever-present feeling that "'something's not right.""

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On a weekend in the middle of June, a few hundred people gathered together at an event called Camp Grounded in northern California for a celebration of leaving technology behind. Organized by the group Digital Detox, the $350 experience appears to have been fun.

And exceptionally well attended by national media.

First, Chris Colin filed a dispatch for The New Yorker. Then, and The New York Times got into the mix.

You know, just your average down-home weekend with the elite of the elite of the media elite. (No, really, Chris Colin is one of the very best writers around.)

I bring this up not to pick on the writers or stories themselves, but to point out that all three of these newsrooms thought the event would be of interest to their readers. Here's what happened on the retreat.

"The rules of Camp Grounded were simple: no phones, computers, tablets or watches; work talk, discussion of people's ages and use of real names were prohibited," the Times wrote.

"Campers at Camp Grounded participated in "playshops," featuring yoga, laughing contests and writing sessions," NPR wrote. "But for many of the participants, the most exciting activity was conversation."

Commenting on the pervasiveness of technology, one of Digital Detox's founders told the NPR reporter, "People are feeling like something's not right."

Indeed, tech anxiety abounds. And I take it seriously. Some people feel something is amiss in their relationships, and that technology is to blame. There's a move, cataloged in nearly every magazine, towards seeing the offline as authentic and the online as hollow, false, unreal. This may be a false distinction, digital dualism, as Nathan Jurgenson calls it, but it's a widespread reaction to the technologies at hand. What was once an exciting new way to make friends now feels overengineered, or -- more damningly in the current climate -- processed.

Processed foods were once the time-saving, awe-inducing markers of an upwardly mobile household. ( Check out this ad for dextrose.) Now, among the upper middle classes, they're a sure sign that someone does not have a firm grip on what the good life is. Processed food, Michael Pollan would tell you, is not even really food at all. And it tangles you up in huge economic webs that stretch across the globe. So while Farm Bill politics make larger-scale solutions impractical, the answer, mostly, is to eat local, organic food -- prepared like Grandma would.

This logic has been extended to digital friendships. Processed relationships get scare quotes: Facebook "friends." Processed relationships can't be as genuine or authentic or honest as real life friendships. Processed relationships generate data for Facebook and Twitter and Google and the NSA. So the solution is to make local friends, hang out organically, and only communicate through means your Grandma would recognize. It's so conservative it's radical!

I can't help but draw the parallel back to the 1960s back-to-the-landers, some of whom became what I call solar transcendentalists, people who thought changing their energy supply would change their souls. (A typical comment: "We grow more in awe of the tenuous hold our lives have on this small planet, more convinced that the sun renews us, in an almost religious way.") Their results varied.

In the late 60s and early 70s, researcher Daniel Yankelovich started polling college students, and found that they'd turned away from the technologies that had helped create the enormously wealthy American society. The movement, though, was not political so much as social. Most wanted to change their own lives more than they wanted to change society. Yankelovich called this phenomenon "The New Naturalism." The packet of ideas, as summarized by political scientist Gabriel Almond, included:

turning off toward the achievement ethic, competition, science, technology, and bureaucracy, and a turning on toward direct sensory experience, adapting to nature rather than seeking to master it, cultivating deep and honest relationships in small groups, and seeking self knowledge through introspection.

Compare that summary to Colin's description of Camp Grounded:

The urge to check in, to check out, to Vine, to Snap, to Tumbl, faded with surprising ease. But the Camp Grounded vision of technology's toxic influence is more holistic: money, clocks, alcohol, drugs, and any talk of people's ages or work were all off-limits. Conversations could no longer begin with 'What do you do?'

Turn against achievement ethic? Check. Turn against technology? Check. Direct sensory experience? Check. Adapting to nature? Check. Cultivating deep and honest relationships in small groups? Check.

As for introspection... The Times' article describes one 45-year-old CEO "carrying the Camp Grounded journal he was given in which he asked himself over and over 'Who am I?' before concluding that he is 'a man with an open heart.'" It ends with the author staring up at the sky, "looking for shooting stars, not reality ones. And for once, I was enjoying the silence."

Digital Detox's name even conjures up the same chemophobia that pervades the current whole foods movement. It says: technology is toxic and addictive, unnatural.

The list of banned items extended beyond phones to beer and *time* itself. According to the Times account, all meals were vegan and gluten-free. The men and women were also separated into different sleeping grounds, and there wasn't much free love. (It turns out that the hippie future is way less fun than the hippie past.)

The dream, I would offer, is that by stripping away the trappings of modern life, we reach a place where humans naturally fall into deep and honest relationships with each other. The vision promises that if it weren't for all the damn new stuff (like watches), we'd all be sitting around sharing the parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of, supporting others in their most meaningful endeavors, and paying mind only to worthy causes and ideas.

The whole concept has a baseline problem. This is not a strawman. Take a look at the media coverage: it's all in there. Camp Grounded is a pure distillation of post-modern technoanxiety. More concentrated than most, but fundamentally composed of the same stuff.

I can sympathize. Who doesn't want depth in their relationships? Or to be judged by the content of one's character, not the company on one's business card? Why won't life slow down and be still? Why can't I figure it all out? And also my phone is making noises while I'm trying to think.

My own view is that life, itself, is the toxic and addictive bit. You cannot stop doing it and doing it and doing it until eventually you die from too much living. (Haruki Murakami touched on this in his book on running: "When we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface," he wrote. "All writers have come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it.")

These are trite observations that could have been made at any time in the last few centuries: you will be imperfect and you'll be distracted by petty nonsense and jealousy and celebrity gossip and football trades. You'll have too much to drink and parcel out time too stingily and judge people for the wrong reasons. You, too, will go to a party and make a snap judgment about continuing to talk with someone on the basis of their answer to the question, "What do you do?" Like the millions before you, you will be horribly uneven but probably pretty decent, all things considered.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the entire Judeo-Christian tradition is founded on duplicity; and early 19th century (i.e. pre-Industrial) literature is filled with the most shallow backstabbing and infighting imaginable.

Digital Detox's project, then, is not a flight back to the natural: They are trying to strip away the gluten and electromagnetic waves and gossip to create new, artificial, better humans.

The whole rhetoric, though, requires a retreat from the frontlines of the battle to define tomorrow's systems. These technologies need real critiques. Our social networks and smartphones are not "neutral" tools. We may be able to manage our relationships with them, but we need to know what they are trying to do, technically, culturally, and financially.

And besides: Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Every single person out there on the land is deeply dependent on the digital-industrial infrastructure of our society. Long ago (Spring 1994), J. Baldwin wrote an essay in the Whole Earth Review on this very topic called, "Where Did You Get Your Axe?"

He begins in a despairing mode we're all familiar with.

We know where the blame lies: Big corporations and their political protectors, advertising and consumerism, and most of all, technology -- especially computers -- that gives them their power. Without the pervasive effects of technology run amok, we could exist as good earth citizens, doing honest work in harmony with the environment... We can forsake the hi-tech life that brings with it so much ruin of environment and human spirit. We should return to the simple life.

Baldwin goes on to describe a family that escaped the hi-tech life for a valley in Wyoming where they made many things by hand. They showed slides and talked about the salutary effects of DIY life. Everyone applauded.

But Baldwin asks, "Where did you get your axe? And the slide camera and the stove, the flour, the nails, the books, the garden seeds, and the window glass?" While it seemed that they'd gotten farther away from a technological life, "they'd merely lengthened the umbilical cord." And here's the key part of the criticism: "By moving to the bucolic boondocks, that happy family dodged the undesirable effects of the technology that was supporting them even as they sneered," he concludes.

There's nothing really wrong with escaping to the boonies. But individuals unplugging is not actually an answer to the biggest technological problems of our time just as any individual's local, organic dietary habits don't solve global agriculture's issues. These are collective problems that will require collective action based on serious critique. (Want a good model? Check out Pollan's sweeping Farm Bill criticisms *and* policy suggestions, which have been overshadowed by his eating advice.)

I refuse to accept that the only good response to an imperfect technology is to abandon it. We need more specific criticisms than the ever-present feeling that "'something's not right." What thing? Developing a political agenda to remake, improve, or forbid technologies requires some sort of rubric: how can I judge what I'm using? What are the deleterious impacts? How are they specific to these media and this time? Which effects are *caused by* the technologies and which are *enabled by* the technologies and which just happen to *occur through* the technologies? What are the ethics? What are the mechanics? What is the baseline?

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'Camp Grounded,' 'Digital Detox,' and the Age of Techno-Anxiety

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On a weekend in the middle of June, a few hundred people gathered together at an event called Camp Grounded in northern California for a celebration of leaving technology behind. Organized by the group Digital Detox, the $350 experience appears to have been fun. And exceptionally well attended by national media.

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Edutopia: Empowering Students Relationship with Media

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Edutopia: Empowering Students Relationship with Media

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It is therefore incumbent on individual educators to help students interact with media in ways that are critical and empowering. We cannot limit this work to media that we have selected for quality or educational value. We should look for ways to engage critical thinking around students' everyday media uses, whether through planned projects and lessons or informal engagement.

A New Taxonomy

In defining empowered uses of media, we have to go beyond notions of screen time or even content (although we can still avoid content that seems harmful or inappropriate). By looking at elements from both the Encoding/Decoding model in communications theory and the New Bloom's Taxonomy, we can create our own taxonomy of media skills. The goal is to help students become aware and empowered decoders of the media they engage with, creating their own meanings and uses from the media.

Consume

At the lowest level, we have consumption. Framed by the question, "What are you watching? (or listening to, playing, etc.)," this is engagement in its simplest form. We allow encoded messages to wash over us without question or interpretation.

Curate

This is followed by curation, or "Why are you watching this?" At this level we begin to think about the constructs of the media and how it serves our needs. We identify genre, character, and themes, and we begin to think about why the media is "for" us.

Create

As new technologies have lowered the barriers to creation, so creation moves to a lower position than in Bloom's Taxonomy. This allows creation to be a more formative step in the process of building critical thought. The framing question is "What are you making?" It asks us to think about the elements identified in the curate stage and how they work within our own creations.

Critique

Next we ask, "Why are you making this?" In doing so, we look at our own creations from a more critical perspective with greater understanding of production, our relationship to media, and the encoding/decoding process. The question "Who is this for?" is often the most difficult for children to tackle, and rarely can students define this before they have engaged in the iterative process of creating products and discussing them critically.

Publish

We strive to reach the level of publishing to understand how others may receive our work. This includes the additional layer of understanding the platforms of distribution through which media is disseminated. Unlike sharing, which we do regularly and often indiscriminately, publishing seeks an authentic audience beyond one's classmates, friends, or acquaintances.

Approaching the Project

This taxonomy can be used formally as a process when planning a project that aims to build these critical thinking skills. Certainly this would be applicable in any dedicated media production class. It would also be a useful context for teachers in any subject who may ask their students to do a "video project" (or other media creation project like music, websites, games, etc.). It can be difficult for teachers with little training in media theory and production to focus on more than the content of the finished product when assigning and assessing these types of projects. This framework can help interested teachers include a layer of critical thinking about media onto their projects for science, math, history, literature, etc.

Start by viewing, analyzing, and discussing examples of the type of media that you are asking your students to create. Students are accustomed to consuming media in the classroom for the purpose of conveying content, but are rarely asked to think about the media product itself. Ask students guiding questions about the audio and visual elements, narrative pacing and editing, interactivity, or the creators, audience, and distribution. What do those elements tell you about the media, and how do they affect the way that you decode the content?

When students are ready to move on to creating their own media, the process shouldn't end when they turn in their project. Even if there will be no formal second draft, it is vital to create the space for students to critique their production and to learn from their critical thinking, that of their peers, and your feedback. Clearly separate formative assessment of the production from assessment of the content, which may be summative. If possible, give students the opportunity to continue developing their productions and consider the different perspectives of potential authentic audiences and how to reach them.

Critical Thinking in Action

Administrators can use this taxonomy to consider the bigger picture of how your school's curriculum on the whole -- and the projects that it contains -- can help move students' critical media skills "up the ladder" over a longer period of time.

I also may reference this framework informally when a student comes to me before class and wants to talk about a TV show he or she watched. I might be dismissive of it based on my personal preference toward the content. The taxonomy provides some tools to engage constructively instead. It suggests questions like:

Why did you want to watch this show?

What about this type of show appeals to you -- genre, themes, characters?

This begins leading to thinking about production and audience.

Next, the student could try to create a video including in the production the elements that you've discussed. This creation leads to more critical thinking about production and the values encoded into media by its producer.

That could cycle the student back to creation in the form of editing and refining, and also to begin thinking about audience and the possibility of publishing the product. The most difficult conceptual step is thinking about not only who you have designed the media for, but also how it might be received by viewers outside the target audience. Students can become more aware of their own decoding process, and that others will decode messages differently.

The skills of being a critical media consumer and creator become ingrained, and the potential now exists for all media use to be positive, prosocial, and empowered.

How would you use this model with your students? To what extent are you already using it? Please share your ideas in the comments section below.

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Empowering Student Relationships With Media

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It is therefore incumbent on individual educators to help students interact with media in ways that are critical and empowering. We cannot limit this work to media that we have selected for quality or educational value. We should look for ways to engage critical thinking around students' everyday media uses, whether through planned projects and lessons or informal engagement.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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"We view digital citizenship as an action, something that we need to practice and do every single day. In today's interconnected world, this is our opportunity to put global education into practice to empower others to become change makers for using tech for good in local, global and digital communities."

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Cailin O'Connor and James Owen

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The Open Mind | The Misinformation Age | Season 2019

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Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall on their new book "The Misinformation Age.

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Designing For Learning Through Joint Media Engagement

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Designing For Learning Through Joint Media Engagement

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What children learn and do with media depends a lot on the content of the media, but they depend perhaps as much on the context in which they are used or viewed, and with whom they are used or viewed

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New ideas for watching, bonding, and learning from TV. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Our current project, Educating with Digital Dilemmas, applies a mixed methods approach to a) systematically document digital opportunities and challenges related to young people’s digital lives, b) examine how tweens, teens, parents, and educators perceive and respond to thorny digital dilemmas, and c) identify powerful supports for digital well-being and citizenship.

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Digital dilemmas are particularly relevant for children and teens. Preparing young people to make reflective and responsible decisions is vital, yet today's digital landscape requires new educational approaches. While internet safety and digital citizenship curricula have been on offer for over a decade, the current context suggests a need to reexamine and rethink digital citizenship education.

Foundations for Digital Life works at the nexus of research and practice. In addition to leading ongoing research about digital dilemmas related to personal well-being, morality, ethics, and civic participation, we are developing new educational approaches and tools keyed to the complex dilemmas youth face today. We are especially focused on supports for educators, parents, and clinicians, as well as on tools that can be used directly by adolescents.

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Digital dilemmas are particularly relevant for children and teens. Preparing young people to make reflective and responsible decisions is vital, yet today's digital landscape requires new educational approaches. While internet safety and digital citizenship curricula have been on offer for over a decade, the current context suggests a need to reexamine and rethink digital citizenship education.

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Every Single Word is a video series that edits down popular films to only feature the words spoken by people of color.

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Every Single Word is a video series that edits down popular films to only feature the words spoken by people of color.

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The MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade focus on creating playful, powerful learning experiences using the affordances of new educational technologies. We leverage design-based research to study and develop solutions to pervasive challenges in teaching and learning

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convergence culture: where old and new media collide

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from; sesame; street; unpredictable; exploration; media; sparking; grassroots; cultural; campaigns

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psychology / psychopathology / dissociative identity disorder

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campaigns; cultural; exploration; from; grassroots; media; sesame; sparking; street; unpredictable

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psychology / psychopathology / dissociative identity disorder

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Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

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Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide [Jenkins, Henry] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

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POPULAR CULTURE AND CIVIC IMAGINATION TOOLKIT

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Welcome to our toolkit! Here we tap the stories, TV shows, games, movies and folk stories we love (and love to hate) to activate our imaginations as we work through the social challenges our communities face. Our playful easy to do activities engage popular culture, imagination and issues of collective concern, tackling questions like: How do we want to live with one another? How do we resolve conflicts in our community? How do we know what's fair for us and for others? How do we work together to solve big problems?

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The toolkit is intended for a broad age group - parents and children (5+), peer-groups, those working in educational settings and really anyone interested in watching, remixing, creating, and having fun with popular culture!

Our number one goal here is to help adults and children (and others) to have fun around shared media experiences, moving us beyond the negative focus on "screen time" to a more generative mode of co-creating our culture. These activities are shaped by concepts such as perspective taking and emotional intelligence, but more broadly, designed to help young people to think about how they live in communities and physical spaces with other people, how they work together to achieve a social order that is fair to all, how they might learn to appreciate each other's different perspectives and experiences, and how they might look at their physical surroundings, both places and things, in new, even magical, ways. We also see these activities as an childhood entry into media literacy (understood not as a school subject but as part of our everyday lives as media consumers and fans.)

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Each activity in the toolkit can be completed as a stand-alone unit. Unless otherwise noted, these activities here emerged from brainstorming sessions with the members of the Civic Paths research group.

This is a work in progress and we welcome feedback and new activity suggestions! Do you have activities that you would like to submit to the Toolkit? Please, reach out to us via this form.

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You can also download the printer friendly version of this toolkit here.

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ICEBREAKER : ACTIVATE THE IMAGINATION!

This is activity is for those who want to warm up and get creative with popular culture before diving into the other activities included in this toolkit.

TOOLKIT ACTIVITIES

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POPULAR CULTURE AND CIVIC IMAGINATION TOOLKIT ​ Welcome to our toolkit! Here we tap the stories, TV shows, games, movies and folk stories we love (and love to hate) to activate our imaginations as we work through the social challenges our communities face.

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Experts tips and tricks for helping your younglings think critically about what they see on TV and social media.

This story is part of a series on parenting-from surveilling our teens to helping our kids navigate fake news and misinformation.
What does it mean for a kid to be media literate? It sounds generally positive and important, like a good dental checkup or a flawless report card. The field is broad and definitions vary, but the main thrust of literacy education is to prepare our children to be adept at accessing, creating, and thinking critically about all types of media.

As parents, we can struggle to wrap our heads around a carousel of premium, user-friendly, and questionably educational media choices. And the thought of sitting through the 57th viewing of The Land Before Time II, the longest hour and 13 minutes of juvenile folly ever created, even if it's for our very precious child's well-being, can be dread-inducing.

Among millennials, the first generation of "digital natives," 17 million are now mothers-but their recollections of navigating AOL Instant Messenger and Napster as tweens haven't necessarily prepared them to curate a child-friendly media diet in 2020.

According to the latest research, though, encouraging your children to think critically about the media they're consuming is much more important than playing screen-time babysitter. You don't have to wait until your kids are able to deconstruct Toni Morrison novels either. Basic media literacy skills are like a second alphabet for the digital age, and fostering them in our children involves asking questions and being an active participant in their media consumption. Here are some age-appropriate tips from a handful of media literacy experts who also happen to moonlight as parents.

A few years ago, on Christmas morning, my 5-year-old daughter squealed with unhinged glee as she unwrapped a Num Noms Lip Gloss Truck. It was all she had wanted for Christmas and she quickly broke down the packaging to discover that the lip gloss, despite looking like ice cream, was not at all edible. It smelled edible and looked like glittery unicorn poop, but the treacherous instruction manual revealed the truth of the matter.

It was a hard lesson. Even if the jubilant ponytailed girl on the commercial was depicted tasting the gloop, my daughter could not, and those diabolical marketers had tricked her. Developmental psychologists say that children younger than 7 or 8 simply can't understand the persuasive intent behind commercials. Because of this cognitive limitation, media literacy efforts have long ignored this younger age group, focusing on middle and high school students instead. But media literacy, like any other skill, can benefit from a strong foundation in the early years, according to Faith Rogow, an expert in early childhood literacy and the founding president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education.

"It's easier to help children develop habits around media use, inquiry, and reflection in the early years than it is to wait until they are defiant middle schoolers," Rogow says. Introducing a child to the difference between a commercialized version of a product or toy-say a polka-dot pink truck filled with Kawaii-eyed ice cream animals and miniature glitter shakers-and the toy itself can be one way to break down that cognitive barrier. Your 5-year-old might just shake their tiny fist at the injustice of the sticky, inedible reality.

You can also play the "What are they trying to sell?" game with kids this age, Rogow says. During a commercial break, see who in the family can be the first to guess what the ad is trying to sell. Most of all, parents should be aware of their own media habits.

"Think of it like driving," Rogow says. "We're not going to turn over the car keys to our toddlers, so we aren't exactly teaching them to drive yet, but they are learning about rules of the road from what we do."

At the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in North Carolina, media literacy educator and doctoral student Jimmeka Anderson helped establish an "active reading" program for young kids. "With active reading, parents do not read the words in the book," Anderson says. "As you go through the pictures in the book, you're asking questions like, 'What color is this bear? What do you think the bear is going to do?'" Anderson says this is a way to build media literacy skills beginning in preschool, equipping kids to become critical thinkers by helping them take an active role in their consumption of pictures and other visual media.

Ian O'Byrne is a digital literacy researcher and former grade school teacher, but he also has two very accessible research subjects: his son, 9, and daughter, 4. In 2019, O'Byrne, along with five other researcher-parents, conducted a study on an oft-overlooked branch of digital literacy-information security and algorithms, specifically how children interact with and understand them.

"These algorithms make decisions about our lives," O'Byrne says. "We started to wonder, when should we start talking to individuals about algorithms and power and about trust and truth in these tools? How do we explain this to our kids?"

He acknowledges that even most adults don't fully comprehend what happens to our information online or on the internet of things, so getting a more thorough grasp of digital security and information-sharing is an important place for parents to start.

O'Byrne and his colleagues haven't yet published their results, but he says they've found two effective strategies that stand out. The first is to find a teachable moment or "approach point" to discuss these issues with your children.

For O'Byrne, the moment came when his son, who has a Google Hangouts account to keep in touch with his parents and a few select friends, was messaged by a complete stranger. On his parenting and tech podcast Technopanic, O'Byrne and colleague Kristen Turner dissect the situation. "He brought it to my attention and I said, 'Look, this is what you need to be concerned about,' and we talked about privacy and security," O'Byrne said. "So I think the first step is finding that approach point and either waiting for them to come to you with a situation, or there might be the need to create a situation."

Creating that situation is the second strategy. It can take the form of talking about something in the news or finding a good picture book or story, or even using a real-life situation your children are familiar with, like a playground, to discuss security concepts.

The next time you snap a photo together at the park or a restaurant, try asking your child if it's all right that you post it to social media. Use the opportunity to talk about who can see that photo and show them your privacy settings. Or if a news story about the algorithms on YouTube comes on television, ask them if they've ever been directed to a video they didn't want to see.

"Dialog is the most important thing," O'Byrne says, but it's also important to talk about the digital world in a way that's relatable to your kids. O'Byrne and his colleagues will submit their final paper to the Journal of Design Science in February. (Disclosure: The call for proposals for a special issue of the journal was sponsored by WIRED, the MIT Media Lab, and the UC Irvine Connected Learning Lab.)

Perhaps the most vulnerable period for children engaged with media are the much maligned teenage years. Teens are forming their identities, experimenting with and exposing themselves to all sorts of new experiences on their journey to adulthood.

At this stage, a lot of parents sign off from regulating their kids' media consumption, but Anderson says this is a critical mistake. "Parents have got to stick with them the whole way through," Anderson says. "That's the age of identity development, when they're trying to figure out who they are. If you're trying to figure out who you are and you haven't figured it out, media will tell you who you should be, or who you should try to be."

Anderson started a program in 2011 called I Am Not the Media, a nonprofit that educates teens about media literacy and messaging. She focuses particularly on marginalized communities, where representation in the media is often not positive and can influence teens' perceptions of themselves. "The kids are having to analyze power structures and how they play out in the media," Anderson says. "Is my voice missing, and what would it look like if my voice was present here?"

One of her favorite things is seeing the "light bulb" come on with her students, when they begin to analyze media on their own terms. "They'll share that with me, because now they're starting to engage with the media in a different way," Anderson says.

Parents should take on more of an advisory role during the teen years, she says. It's still important to have restrictions, but we're not equipping them for the world if we shield them from it entirely. Anderson suggests that parents work with their kids to come up with reasonable limits. Excessive social media use is linked to depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues, so come to an agreement with your child about how much is too much. It's also important to follow your kids' social media accounts.

"I can still engage with you and see the content that you're posting, because if you can't share it with me, you shouldn't share it at all," Anderson says.

Teens also engage more actively with news. A 2017 report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that promotes media education, found that among kids between age 10 and 18, 39 percent get their news from online sources, most often Facebook and YouTube.

Parents often don't realize that their children are taking in news through these platforms, says Kelly Mendoza, the senior director of education programs at Common Sense Media. "It's more difficult to determine fact versus fiction when it comes to social media." Only 44 percent of kids feel confident that they can tell fake news from real news, according to the same 2017 report.

In its curriculum for middle and high school students, Common Sense uses a technique called lateral reading. If you find a piece of information, you try to see if you can corroborate it with another source. Ideally, parents should encourage kids to verify information through trusted news outlets.

"Help kids understand that journalism has a process, where a journalist does fact checking and they try to get to the truth of an issue," Mendoza says. "A lot of stuff that we see on social media isn't designed that way. It's designed to get you to click on it."

On the flip side, kids in this age range trust news they hear from their parents more than any other source. Across the board, experts agree that staying informed and media savvy as an adult is critical. If you don't have a clue what's going on in the run-up to the presidential election, or what the fluff Fortnite is all about, you'd be hard pressed to help your children understand it.

"We're more likely to believe things that we hear from our friends and family than from any random information source," Anderson says. "So you are a form of media, and it's important for you to vet the information that you're sharing as well."

The key, Anderson explains, is not to tell your children how it is but to teach them how to question why it is. If this seems at odds with how many of us remember our upbringing, that's because it is. The authoritarian "Because I said so" refrain of old has been linked to lower academic performance and poor emotional regulation.

So while it may cause a few headaches in the present to coach your children to willfully ask "why," you'll be setting them up for an adulthood where they don't default to the latest social media platform or authority figure to answer that question for them.

Here are the books, apps, podcasts, and websites the experts recommend.

A guide to screens in moderation for busy families: The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life by Anya Kamenetz

A non-Draconian guide to media for younger kids: Screen Time: How Electronic Media-From Baby Videos to Educational Software-Affects Your Young Child by Lisa Guernsey

An app created by the News Literacy Project that features a game quiz-style approach to teaching literacy on the go: Informable

A news app specifically curated for 7- to 10-year-olds: News-O-Matic

A podcast by Ian O'Byrne and Kristen Turner that aims to muffle the urge to helicopter our kids' screen use: Technopanic

Thousands of media reviews, how-to and discussion guides for parents and educators on a wide range of media topics: Common Sense Media

Activities and videos for kids and parents on identity and representation in media: Critical Media Project
When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works.

More Stories on Parenting

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How to Raise Media-Savvy Kids in the Digital Age

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Experts tips and tricks for helping your younglings think critically about what they see on TV and social media.

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Even though they're no longer a couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie both recently confirmed they put safety measures on the Internet to provide boundaries for their children. They definitely plan to keep watch on their social media use as they age. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently suggested he wouldn't want his nephew on a social network. Years ago, Apple Founder Steve Jobs said he didn't want his kids to even own an iPad. Why? It's simple. Children's health experts warned (on Facebook) that excessive use of digital devices and social media "is harmful to children and teens."

I meet faculty and parents frequently who are sharing these concerns and asking the same questions about social media use. I realize I've written much about this in the past, but maybe a short Q and A guide, based on research, would be helpful here.
1. How much is too much social media use?
One study by UNICEF, reports that "some time on social media is actually good" and that "digital technology seems to be beneficial for children's social relationships." On social media we can connect with friends, give to charities and be informed of what's happening around the world. With too much time, however, screens can become damaging to our mental health. The key is to separate understandable concerns with actual data on the subject.

Believe it or not, the average teen today spends about 9 hours a day on a screen. That's like a full-time job. According to Monitoring the Future, just two hours on social media has been shown to contribute to anxiety and unhappiness among teens. I suggest, a 60-90 minute limit each day. The other hours should be filled with face-to-face hours with friends, sports, work, activities, studies and family. This ratio has been shown to produce happier kids and better students. Further, it results in more satisfied young adults. I recognize this will be a major shift for some teens-so if you choose to do this, start with a conversation about making a slow steady change.
2. Should we monitor our kids' social media use? If so, how?
Parents differ on their opinions about whether to check what their kids are doing on social media sites. Some believe their children deserve privacy and should not worry about mom or dad checking on them. I differ, only because I've seen too many case studies of kids not being fully aware of the dangers of predators, mental health issues and even cyber-bullies who hide behind a screen to wreak havoc on peers. What's more, teens receive propositions from adults with wrong intentions and from others who engage in sexting. The teens in our focus groups told us boldly, "My parents have no idea what my life is like at night and what I do on social media." This suggests to me that they're up to something their parents may not support. The statistics reveal that 71% of teens admit to hiding on-line activities from their parents. As long as they are minors, I believe it's wise for parents or guardians to check their children's social media posts.

So, here are some apps you can explore to monitor your teen's activity on a phone:
1. Norton
This allows you to set phone time limits and filter web content coming in.
2. TeenSafe
This allows you to track your child's calls, texts, GPS and social media activity.
3. MobSafetyRangerBrowser
This enables you to view your child's website browsing and set time limits.
4. PhoneSheriff
This enables you to do all of the above, but it is available for fewer devices.
5. DinnerTime
This allows you to limit phone Internet use during family meals.
6. Qustodio
This allows you to track and set a phone curfew where phones shut down.

There are actually several other apps that empower a parent to know what's happening on their child's phone. While they are minors, I think you should know.

One other idea might be for parents encourage their children to use privacy settings to ensure their posts are going out to a select set of friends.
3. What are some symptoms that a student needs to cut back on social media?
According to Common Sense Media, 50% of teens say they are addicted to their cell phone. While CSM concludes more study is needed to determine how deep digital addiction is, teens feel the symptoms and consequences of it. It's a growing issue in middle class America. Two-thirds of parents, 66%, feel their teens spend too much time on their mobile device. Phones have now replaced teens hanging out at the mall or at the movies. It's a new day.

There are a number of signals a young person naturally sends that they've spent too much time on social media platforms or on their mobile device in general:

Withdrawing from face-to-face social interaction.

Consistent anxiety, stress or feeling overwhelmed by normal routines.

Grades begin to slip and assignments reflect poor work or are left undone.

Avoidance of real life responsibilities, such as chores or homework.

Ill at ease, ill-equipped or unresponsive to people in front of them.

Phubbing-teens snub people next to them by looking down at their phone.

Phones begin to create conflict in their closest relationships.

A few years ago, I suggested a group of college students "surrender their phones" for a day. It was an experiment. What did we all discover? The first two hours were horrific, not unlike a drug addict giving up their drugs, cold turkey. After a couple of hours, however, the day began to feel less stressful. The students felt liberated from the tether of their device. By the day's end, they told me how nice it was to not be enslaved to that phone and that they wanted to "unplug" on a regular basis.
4. How do I handle arguments about their portable device?
Millions of parents have walked into landmines, as they disagree with their child on any number of mobile phone use or social media sites. Emotional debates occur, which can divide parents and kids and lead to a breakdown in communication.

I have a suggestion that has worked for many parents along the way. It's a step that not only guides the conversations on this topic but prepares teens for the world they are about to mature into as adults: a contract.

In 2013, I posted an article on our blog page about a "phone contract" between a mom and her child. The mother had purchased her daughter's phone (as is usually the case) and the agreement enabled her (from the beginning) to outline the terms. In it, she basically reminds her child that Mom bought the phone and, therefore, owns the phone. Any time the child violates the agreement, the child must give up the device for a period of time. This is not unlike a contract a customer might enter with AT&T or Sprint or some other carrier. The difference is, this agreement is laced with love and understanding. If a parent hosts a conversation and lays out the terms before purchasing the device, things generally go better. Both parties agree to it and sign it. The key is that the parent must stick to the terms and enforce them.
5. Should we be friends with our children on social media?
This probably depends on the personality and age of your child. Some parents and kids connect well via smart phone and others do not. According to Pew Research:

53% are friends with their parents. This tends to work better when the child is between 12-14. By ages 15-21 it often feels "smothering" to them. Then, later as a young adult, it seems to feel OK again to them.

47% are friends with their children on Facebook. This feels nice to the parent but it's usually the reason many teens get off Facebook and on to other sites.

41% are connected with people they have never met in person. Teens do this because it feels adventuresome, yet safe. After all, it's only a screen. Later, however, it often leads to LMIRL: Let's Meet In Real Life and can be dangerous.

Whatever the case, most parents can bank on one thing for sure: your child may befriend you on a social media site like Facebook or Instagram, but they likely have platforms where they use false identities you know nothing about. A parent may assume they know all about their teens, but would be shocked if they knew the total amount of personas their children actually use.

For example, consider "Finsta." This is a fake Instagram persona, where teens can create a totally fraudulent identity and post things you may never know about. They might have five Snapchat accounts. Or, several Twitter accounts. Just know that if you and your child connect on one platform, that doesn't mean it's the only one they use. It may be helpful to talk about this with them, or even talk to one of their friends to naturally discover if there are any personas you don't know about.

I may sound like an "old school" leader who's just not up with the times. I contend, however, our kids need good leadership from us. Their phones can be helpful rather than damaging if we lead them intentionally.

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Parent's Guide to Social Media Use for Kids

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Even though they're no longer a couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie both recently confirmed they put safety measures on the Internet to provide boundaries for their children. They definitely plan to keep watch on their social media use as they age. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently suggested he wouldn't want his nephew on a social network.

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Use our social media guide for parents: tips, advice, and the latest research to navigate the social media landscape and help keep your kids' online interactions safe.

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Before baby, you were a Facebooking, Instagramming, texting fool, sharing everything from your perfect pasta dish to your hella-good manicure. Now, looking at your little bundle of joy, you may be wondering: What's OK to share, and what's TMI? What are the easiest tech tools for preserving those precious moments without broadcasting them to the world? Is it safe to post pictures of baby? These tips can help.
Keep your head in the game
Think through your posts -- really. To you, an ultrasound image or the story of baby's first giggle is the most precious thing ever. To the rest of the world, it's just content. ( Cute content, but still.) Social platforms track data, your followers judge what you post, and just like anything else, your information can be copied, shared, or misused. Ask yourself the three questions below to determine whether you need to share smaller. If so, you can send your picture to specific people, make an invite-only private group, or just set your profile to private.

How will this make others feel? Maybe you have followers struggling with fertility who aren't ready to share your joy. Maybe your friends are over your baby (sorry). Maybe folks disagree with your choice to share baby pics at all.

How wide is my network? You could be connected to people you barely know -- friends of friends of friends -- and there's no guarantee that those people will have your family's best interests at heart.

Avoid "over-sharenting." What's over-sharenting? Pictures of poop, constant updates on every gurgle, livestreams of intimate moments such as breastfeeding, bath time, and potty training. Be thoughtful about what you're sharing and how often. And make sure to comment, like, or otherwise interact with your friends' and families' posts about their lives.

Know when to go to the pros. It's fine to get input from your online pals, but for anything that has major importance -- feeding, health and safety, money, education -- call your pediatrician, child care provider, financial advisor, or your mom. Anything with minimal consequences, such as when to put baby in shoes or the best time to clip their nails, is OK to crowdsource.

Be careful about baby's "digital footprint." Some parents create social media profiles for their babies with the idea their kids will use them when they turn 13 (the age of consent for social media). While it can be fun for relatives to get an update "from baby," a profile creates a digital footprint, which invites data tracking, marketing, and other privacy issues. If you decide to create a profile, make sure you include only minimal information, use strict privacy settings, and avoid any photos that are potentially embarrassing.

Here are some things to consider:

You might love the photos of baby in the tub, but how will they feel about them when they're older?

Tweens or teens might be upset that you used their names to create profiles they didn't actually consent to.

Social media sites are for users over 13 because companies use data -- basically, who your friends are, what you click on, and where you go on the web -- to build a demographic profile, which they then sell to other companies for marketing purposes. The data isn't personally identifiable, but it's still Big Brother-ish to think they're tracking your baby's online movements.

Be Practical
Join a photo-storage service. You'll post about 7 billion photos of your kid before they're out of diapers. Photo-storage platforms such as Flickr, Photobucket, and Google Photos have the advantage of free or low-cost storage, plus the ability to share with only certain people or groups. (Every online platform has privacy issues, though, so make sure you're comfortable with the terms of any service you join.)

Preserve memories digitally. You can do this a few ways. Some parents like to grab the opportunity to create an email account under baby's name. Once they have an email address, you can use it to send messages, photos, and videos so they are all collected in one place. Or, consider an electronic scrapbook or journal such as Notabli, 23snaps, and eFamily, which offer a secure way to collect and share photos, videos, and stories.
Protect your well-being
Get rid of triggers. The highly curated photos and posts from friends whose lives seem more fulfilling can make moms feel sad, jealous, and angry. Unfollow anyone who doesn't make you feel good. Instead, seek out groups, advocates, and thought leaders who nourish your soul.

Tweak your settings. Most social platforms allow you to hide posts (see fewer posts from someone); snooze (temporarily stop seeing posts); mute (turn someone off for a while); and do not disturb (temporarily block a person).

Manage notifications. Constant pings on your phone can overwhelm and distract you. You can turn off notifications entirely, allow only important ones, or batch them so you receive them on a schedule.

Connect with the growing anti-perfection movement. Real Simple's public Instagram profile, #womenirl, shares photos from people's real (messy) lives.

Step away. The impact of social media isn't fully understood. New parents are emotionally vulnerable because they're tired, unsure, and perhaps suffering from postpartum depression. If you feel crappy more than you feel good, and sharing photos from your life doesn't make you feel better, talk to a professional about what you're going through.

Find real, meaningful online support. There are some really supportive online groups with active, engaged members.

Fatherly, National At-Home Dad Network, and All Pro Dad have supportive communities for new fathers.

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Before baby, you were a Facebooking, Instagramming, texting fool, sharing everything from your perfect pasta dish to your hella-good manicure. Now, looking at your little bundle of joy, you may be wondering: What's OK to share, and what's TMI? What are the easiest tech tools for preserving those precious moments without broadcasting them to the world?

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Editor's Note: Kids are growing up on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter -- spending hours every day creating, communicating, and connecting in digital spaces. Whether you're a tech-savvy parent or a technophobic one, you're probably looking for tools to help your family navigate the many issues that come along with our media- and technology-saturated society. This digital world, which can bring young people incredible resources and learning opportunities, also opens up the very real parenting challenges of managing non-stop screen time, preventing cyberbullying, finding age-appropriate content, and more. Common Sense Media is an organization that provides essential resources for families to manage the impact of challenges like this. We've asked their editors to compile a list of their most popular articles and tip sheets to guide parents as they raise responsible and thoughtful digital citizens.
Family Media Management

From movies to TV to games, kids are spending more time with electronic devices than ever before. Common Sense Media encourages parents to take control of the media and technology in their family's life in order to maintain a balance of rich learning experiences with entertainment.

Tip: Use media together. Whenever you can, watch, play, and listen with your kids. Talk about the content. When you can't be there, ask them about the media they've used. Help kids question and analyze media messages. Share your own values. Let them know how you feel about solving problems with violence, stereotyping others, selling products using sex or cartoon characters, or advertising to kids in schools or movie theaters. Help kids connect what they learn in the media to real-life events and other activities -- like playing sports and creating art -- in order to broaden their understanding of the world. (From "Tips for a Healthy Media Diet.")

More Resources from Common Sense:

Internet Safety and Online Privacy

In today's world, where sharing is becoming the norm, there's a lot of talk about privacy and online reputation. Everything kids say or do online can affect how others view their character. These articles offer parents insight into how companies can collect and use their kids' data and personal information -- and what they can do about it.

Tip: Explain that nothing is really private online. It's crucial for kids to guard their own online privacy by not posting and sharing things they don't want to become public. A few more tips: Ask permission before you go online. Never share passwords. Keep personal details -- name, address, phone number, how much money your parents make -- to yourself. Think before you post -- is this really something you want to share? Only communicate with people you know -- never chat with or send photos to strangers. (From "Parents' Guide to Protecting Kids' Privacy Online.")

More Resources from Common Sense:

Social Networking and Virtual Worlds

Now more than ever, kids are chatting, sharing, and connecting on social networking sites. The latest research from Common Sense reveals that teens are avid, daily users of social media, and 75% of them currently have a profile on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Formspring. While they can use social tools to get the best of what the Web has to offer, tragic stories of cyberbullying seem to be a daily news staple. These tips and resources will help parents keep kids' online lives responsible, respectful, safe, and private.

Tip: Help kids understand the line between funny and cruel. Kids' online communication is often purposely ambiguous or accidentally cruel -- both of which can lead to misunderstandings. If drama starts brewing, ask your kid to call or speak face-to-face with their friend to clear it up. (From "Five Things You Need to Know About Cyberbullying.")

More Resources from Common Sense:

Role Models and Stereotypes

Kids look up to celebrities -- and take their cues from people they admire. Too much sexy material and violent imagery can affect their behavior and the choices they make. Body image, self-esteem, and weight issues are all affected by the media that young people watch, play, and interact with. These articles help explain the influence of celebrity culture and media stereotypes. They'll help parents make healthy, age-appropriate choices for their family.

Tip: Grab the headlines, and make them teachable moments. If you see teen drinking on a TV show -- or you see pictures on the Internet of celebs smoking pot or getting arrested for drunk driving -- check in with your kids. For young kids, see how much they understand. Grade-schoolers get a lot of confusing information from their peers, so set the facts straight. For preteens, turn celebrity misbehavior into teachable moments by letting them know what you think about the behavior. And for teens, ask questions. For example, if a celebrity they like is in trouble with alcohol, ask whether their peers are using alcohol or whether they have any anxieties or questions about drinking. Take time to share your opinions -- and expectations -- about the issues. (From "When Good Role Models Go Bad.")

More Resources from Common Sense:

Educational Issues

We all want our kids to succeed in school. We want to reinforce classroom learning and values at home and be well-equipped to address some of the issues that come up while our kids are navigating technology and digital media to support their schoolwork. These articles will help families guide their kids to make smart, ethical decisions in their digital lives.

Tip: Don't assume that your children automatically know what's right and wrong. The digital world operates with different rules -- that is, wherever rules even exist. Establish rules about use right from the start. Make sure kids have cited their material, clearly indicating where they found that statistic, that insight, that map. Be explicit about what is and isn't acceptable behavior. Don't assume they know. And make sure you have real consequences for breaking the rules. (From "Cheating Goes High-Tech.")

More Resources from Common Sense:

It's our hope that these curated parent tips and resources will help guide you through both the challenges and opportunities that come along with raising kids in a digital world. For more information, media reviews, and advice, visit the Common Sense Media website.

Additional Resources on the Web

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Media and Digital Literacy: Resources for Parents

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Young people are immersed in technology in ways previous generations could not have imagined. Common Sense Media has compiled this list of resources for parents seeking advice and information about how to help their children explore smartly and stay safe.

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The App Generation: Howard Gardner and Katie Davis

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The App Generation: Howard Gardner and Katie Davis

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This book is an exploration of the power of apps to shape young people for better or for worse. No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply, some would say totally, involved with digital media. The authors, both developmental psychologists, name today's young people the "app generation", and in this book they explore what it means to be "app-dependent" versus "app-enabled" and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era. They are concerned with three vital areas of adolescent life: identity, intimacy, and imagination

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Resource Summary

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply-some would say totally-involved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today's young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be "app-dependent" versus "app-enabled" and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era. ISBN-13: 978-0300196214

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The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy,

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No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply-some would say totally-involved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today's young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be "app-dependent" versus "app-enabled" and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.

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Cinderella Ate My Daughter - Peggy Orenstein

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Cinderella Ate My Daughter - Peggy Orenstein

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Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?

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Peggy Orenstein, acclaimed author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex and Schoolgirls, offers a radical, timely wake-up call for parents, revealing the dark side of a pretty and pink culture confronting girls at every turn as they grow into adults.
Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?

In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable-yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.

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cinderella ate my daughter: dispatches from the front lines of the new girlie-girl culture

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family & relationships / parenting / general

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feminism; feminist reads; best feminist books; disney princesses; princess disney princess; cinderella; girly girls; how to raise girls; best parenting books; social commentary; feminist lit; books on pop culture; best books on social commentary; womens studies; gender studies; child development; best books on child development; parenting books; feminist nonfiction; best book club books; womens issues; social science; best sociology; parenthood; consumerism; parenting girls; marketing ploys; miley cyrus; american girl dolls; marketing influences; materialism; disneyland; coming of age; girls and sex; girls sex; raising healthy girls; adult; childhood; children; cultural studies; culture; daughters; disney; fairy tales; family; femininity; gender; gender roles; girlhood; girls; humor; imported; library; marketing; media; memoir; mothers and daughters; non-fiction; parenting; parents; pink; pop culture; princess; psychology; society; sociology; women; 2011; 2012; 2013

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Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

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Compre online Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, de Orenstein, Peggy na Amazon. Frete GRÁTIS em milhares de produtos com o Amazon Prime. Encontre diversos livros escritos por Orenstein, Peggy com ótimos preços.

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The Tribe of Travelling Tales is a digital story project that involves global collaboration among schools form around the world so they can connect,share their voice and make a difference in the world.