According to a 2009 Keiser Family Foundation study, kids are spending an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes per day consuming media (Generation M2 Report, 2009). This means students are spending around 53 hours per week watching videos, television, surfing the Internet, playing video games, texting their friends, commenting on Facebook, listening to music, watching Youtube videos, and much more. This is more time than an adult spends at a full time job during the week. The internet is growing and changing more rapidly than I (or most of us I suspect) can wrap our minds around. Because of this students find themselves facing different challenges than previous generations have faced.
Here are just a few of the challenges kids currently face:
1/3 of kids have been victims of cyber bullying (Commonsense media, 2012). A kid no longer has to worry about dealing with bullies at school, but now kids can post harmful words and pictures on public sites such as Facebook. Kids can find themselves receiving hateful text messages.
1/3 of Kids have sexted which means they have sent or received inappropriate photos of themselves or messages about their explicit behavior (ABC News, 2010).
23% of kids (31% of males) report feeling addicted to video games. They are not making this up. A study by PLoS One has found that the same regions of the brain that causes drug addiction are the same ones that are used when kids play video games (Sevege, 2012).
Kids can purchase items impulsively through the internet.
Kids are constantly asked to provide personal information to companies.
Colleges and Employers check digital reputations to make acceptance decisions. We live in an age where what a kid posts on the internet at 14 can have lifelong consequences.
According to the 2009 Keiser Family Foundation there is a high correlation between heavy media use and depression, and there is a high correlation between low media use and happiness and satisfaction (Generation M2 Report, 2009).
Here is a document Microsoft created highlighting many of the challenges kids face in our connected generation.
Thinking about this is daunting and makes me glad I grew up in the 90's and didn't have to face any of this. What can we do? We can incorporate digital citizenship into our curriculum. According to Ann Collier, the editor of Net Family News.org says "digital Citizenship is "critical thinking and ethical choices about the content and impact on oneself, others, and one's community of what one sees, says, and produces with media, devices, and technologies" (Collier, 2011) We can teach students how to use technology for empowerment rather than only as entertainment. We can teach them how to sift through the vast amount of information on the internet and how to cite sources properly. We can teach them how to responsibly create their digital footprint, and how to manage their time in a healthy way. We can help them learn the permanent consequences of pressing send and how what they write on the internet or in texts is written in pen not pencil. We can teach students that cyber bullying is real and that sexting isn't safe.
·
I have created an action plan for the boarding school community I work at, and I have attached it below. This is a video for the administrators of our Health, Wellness, and Community Life (HWCL) curriculum at our school that demonstrates the need for these topics to be included in our HWCL curriculum)Digital Citizenship Action Plan
Digital Citizenship Contract by Andrew Churches from edorigami
Digital Citizenship Student Survey
Digital Citizenship Scenarios
Links
Does Internet Addiction Change Teens Brains?
Keiser Family Foundation Generation M2 Report
Want a quick summary of their findings? Click here.
I Keep Safe
Common Sense Media
New York Times: Teaching about the Web includes Troublesome Parts
New York Times: If Your Kid is Awake they are Probably Online
Text unto Others as You Would Have Them Text Unto You
Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship
Sources:
ABC News. (2009, March 13). The consequences of sexting [Video webcast].
Retrieved from
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/consequences-sexting-7080436
Common Sense Media (2012). Stand Up to Cyberbullying. Retrieved July 28, 2012 http://www.commonsensemedia.org/cyberbullying
I Keep Safe (2012). Sexting. Retrieved from http://www.ikeepsafe.org/articles/sexting/.
Keiser Family Foundation. (2009). Report: generation M2: media in the lives of 8-18-year-olds. Retrieved July 28, 2012, from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/8010.cfm
Special thanks to the following sites for photos for the video:
Http://markdownworkin.com
http://stopthehateofcyberbullying.blogspot.com
http://uthmag.com/cyber-bullying/
http://n4bb.com
http://buzzaboutgames.com
http://Marketingallinclusive.com
Http://earnmoney-veryeasy.blogspot.com
http://chiropracticunderground.com
http://analyhighschool.org
http://Bybassfacebookfanpages.com
http://Clevland.cbs.com
http://writeforhr.com
No comments:
Post a Comment