Our students are online. In today’s world, time online is nearly inevitable. Whether kids are using the internet to do homework, socialize, play games, learn new hobbies, or be entertained, most are interacting in some way shape or form with the digital world. In fact, as of 2020, 80% of parents reported children between the ages of 5-11 interacts with a tablet or computer at home (Pew Research Center). Because of the inevitability, our hope is that we can provide you with some helpful digital citizenship activities.
This type of engagement is new for kids (and adults, alike!) and comes with consequences, both positive and negative.
Positive:
- Connection with Peers: The internet offers a unique opportunity to stay connected outside of school and for children and teens to meet people that share similar interests.
- Access to Information: At their fingertips, children can learn just about anything. They can take musical lessons or learn how to crochet or solve a Rubik’s cube or practice coding and so much more.
- Entertainment: The options are endless for videos, movies, television shows, etc.
Negative:
- Access to Information: Because of the ease of access, kids can be exposed to things that are not necessarily appropriate for them.
- Lack of Creativity: Boredom is where creativity thrives! When kids are constantly engaged digitally, they are not using their brains to find ways to entertain themselves. (Harvard)
- Risk of Obsession/Addiction: With a still-developing ability to restrain themselves, children are at a higher risk of becoming obsessed or addicted to the fast-paced digital world.
- Comparison: With the very limited view into the lives of others, children and teens can develop a diminished sense of self or warped sense of how others live, impacting their self-esteem and contentment.
I came across this quote that really spoke to some of the challenges of the digital world:
“Social media offers the ‘empty calories of social interaction’ that appear to help satiate our biological and psychological needs, but do not contain any of the healthy ingredients necessary to reap benefits”
American Psychological Association
As adults, it is our job to help provide our students with some of those healthier ingredients. We can do that in many ways, including some digital citizenship activities that can help them to learn about respect (of ourselves and others), balance, and safety when engaging online.
Respect
When talking to children about respect online, tackle the conversation from two lenses: respecting others and respecting yourself.
Respecting Others
Interactions with other people online can be tricky. When you can’t see the other person, people tend to be less filtered and thus, more mean. This is why it is the first rule we discuss in our digital respect lesson. We want to combat this by reaffirming for kids that whether we are online or in-person, we need to T.H.I.N.K before speaking (or typing, or posting).
- T – Is it true?
- H – Is it helpful?
- I – Is it inspiring?
- N – Is it necessary?
- K – Is it kind?
While not everything we say online will necessarily be inspiring or helpful, getting your students to think about their interactions more intentionally will, hopefully, keeps digital conversations fun. However, conflicts happen and people do the wrong thing sometimes. It can be really helpful to prepare kids for those moments by helping them come up with a plan for if they feel like things are becoming mean or negative. Ask questions like,
- “What would you do if you were playing a game and someone kept calling you mean names after you’ve asked them to stop?”
- “What can you do if you notice a friend posting unkind comments on a classmate’s photo?”
- “How can you respond if someone texts you in a way that makes you feel bad?”
Another important point about respecting others is to ask before you post. It’s important that students understand that everyone has a right to privacy and that it’s kind to ask before sharing a photo or story that involves another person.
Next, we want to tackle cyberbullying. We want kids to feel comfortable saying something if they see something. That starts with defining cyberbullying.
In our digital respect lesson, we define cyberbullying as, “Using the digital devices, sites, and apps to intimidate, harm, or upset someone.”
Once they understand what it is, they need to understand how to intervene. That may look different based on whether a child experiences it themselves or witnesses it.
To help build some confidence in their ability to be an upstander, you might also brainstorm language together and practice responding to cyberbullying scenarios through role plays.
Respecting Yourself
Just like our choices in real-life, our choices online reflect who we are. We want to encourage children to reflect on their choices by asking themselves,
- “Would I make this choice if I was interacting with this person face-to-face?”
- “Does this choice make me feel good about myself?”
- “How will others feel about me if I make this choice?”
To reinforce these concepts of respecting ourselves and others, give students the opportunity to decide whether different scenarios follow or break the rules about engaging respectfully online and how to respond to them. One activity inside our digital respect lesson has students travel in small groups around the room to different scenarios posted on the walls.
Balance
Part of respecting yourself online (or with technology in general) is also having a healthy balance between the digital world and the real world. When kids spend a lot of time online, it can be easy to get lost in, with all the different opportunities it provides.
Before you talk to them about how to establish or maintain this important balance, it can be eye-opening to have them complete an inventory that aims to help them better understand their own digital use.
The comparison between how much time they are spending in the real vs. digital world can be eye opening!
Once they understand the importance and the need to balance digital/technology/screen time, you can move on to talking about the how. Consider starting with these four guidelines:
- Use a timer and/or set specific times to be online vs. offline.
- Identify screen-free activities you enjoy.
- Put your phone away during quality time with friends and family.
- Charge devices outside your room at night.
There are certainly others that can be added as you discuss with your students! To expand on this discussion for kiddos with particularly high internet engagement, invite them set a specific goal around one (or more) of these ideas.
Safety
As educators, we talk to kids a lot about being safe. We don’t shy away from difficult conversations about sexual abuse (see these posts for more info: Kid Trapper, Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept/Erin’s Law) and we can’t shy away from conversations about digital safety, either. These conversations can be hard and uncomfortable for kids (and sometimes for us!), but it’s important that we talk about them so they know how to keep themselves safe, in the real or the digital world.
When teaching your students about digital safety, there are three steps they can follow: pause, listen to your gut, and make the safe choice.
Pause
The internet moves FAST. Sometimes, it’s okay to act quickly (like when playing a game), but other times, we need to pause before we act (like when deciding what to post). If we don’t help children learn to pause when they should, they can be at-risk for making dangerous choices (or choices that aren’t showing themselves or others respect).
Listen to Your Gut
We want kids to learn how to use their instincts to keep themselves safe online. Say “Sometimes, when something doesn’t feel quite right, our body gives us a sign. That is called our ‘gut feeling’ and it is meant to keep us safe! This is important for us to learn how to listen to those signs.”
Practice by giving students relevant digital situations and asking them to identify what their gut says. The two activities below are options inside our digital safety lesson.
Make the Safe Choice
It’s not always easy for kids to recognize what is safe and what is not, especially because digital situations don’t always have a clear “right” or “wrong.” Our students can be easily influenced into making decisions they wouldn’t make in person, or see things they aren’t developmentally ready for – that’s why practice is so important!
You can use these situations from our digital safety lesson to practice pausing, listening to their gut, and deciding if it is a safe or unsafe choice.
To process after, you might ask questions like,
- Were there any scenarios your group did not agree on? Why?
- How did you decide if it was safe or unsafe?
- Do you think some of these decisions would be harder than others?
While we can’t remove the digital world from kid’s lives, we can help prepare them for it by using digital citizenship activities like these, to help them learn to interact in a way that is respectful, balanced, and safe.
