Digital Citizenship Week 2022

Digital Citizenship Week: October 17-21, 2022

By Kate Allen
For Parents
October 17, 2022

What is Digital Citizenship Week? 

According to Common Sense Media, "kids today may seem like experts at using technology, but the digital world requires all kinds of skills and habits that kids don’t just pick up as they go. Digital citizenship helps them learn those skills. The Common Sense lessons help kids in grades K–2 develop healthy media habits and learn how to be safe online. Lessons for kids in grades 3–5 continue to focus on screen time and online safety. Older kids also learn about how to recognize cyberbullying, what is and isn’t OK to share online, and how to find credible news and information."

What can families do?

Common Sense Education provides resources to help you support your kid’s learning. As we teach these lessons in class, we’ll be sending home tip sheets, videos, and activities for you to do with your kids. You can visit the Common Sense website at www.commonsensemedia.org for more. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Working together with Common Sense Education, we can prepare today’s kids to think critically and use tech in positive, creative, and powerful ways.

 

See the Family Tip sheets below for some specific ways you can help your students become good digital citizens

Create screen-free times and zones. Help kids take breaks from tech by limiting screen time in bedrooms, during study time, or at the dinner table. Try parental controls. Set content limits that make sense for your family. Alongside conversations about healthy media habits, use features such as content filtering, privacy settings, and time limits offered by the apps and platforms your family uses to help manage access and exposure to media. Establish clear family rules. Decide together what kind of media and tech is OK -- and when it's OK to use it. A family media plan can help get everyone on the same page. Watch and play together. Choose quality, age-appropriate media to enjoy with your kids. Visit commonsensemedia.org to find shows, games, and more. Help kids identify healthy behaviors. Practice talking about feelings -- both physical and emotional -- during screen and non-screen activities.

Discuss personal vs. private info. Talk about the difference between what's OK to share online (favorite color) and what's not (home address). Use privacy settings. Together, go through the settings on all new apps to make sure you both know what information your kids are sharing. Especially in the beginning, it's better to share very little. Avoid location tracking. Location-aware apps can be super helpful. But apps that use a device's location to help people find your kid or offer them ads for nearby businesses should be used with caution. Turn them off if you can. Power up passwords. Work together with kids to help them come up with complex passwords. Think outside the dictionary. Use phrases and special characters that make passwords hard to guess but easy to remember. Remind kids to keep passwords private and change them regularly. Skip quizzes. Help kids identify and avoid clickbait, quizzes, special offers, and anything that asks for personal or private information. This helps keep information secure and devices safe.

Be a role model. Before you post a photo of your kid on social media, ask if it's OK to share. Not only will you give them control over their own digital footprint, you'll also be showing them what you expect them to do with others' photos. Use privacy settings. Together, go through all the settings on new apps to make sure you both know what information your kids are sharing. Especially in the beginning, it's better to share very little. Question everything. Before you sign school forms or register for a new online service for your kid, check the privacy policy to see what kind of information you're giving the school or company and who they're sharing it with. Sharing some data might be required, but you may be able to opt out of others. Talk with your kid about why it's important to protect your personal data. Use a celebrity as an example. With older kids, choose a celebrity or another famous person and look through their Twitter or Instagram posts with your kid. Discuss your impressions of them based on what they post. Ask your kid what kind of image they'd like to project online.

 

More Digital Citizenship Resources from FCPS