Digital Smarts Blog

The FBI recently warned in an alert that malicious actors “almost certainly” will be using deepfakes to advance their influence or cyber-operations in the coming weeks and months. The alert notes that foreign actors are already using deepfakes or synthetic media — manipulated digital content including video, audio, images and text — in their influence campaigns. So far, deepfakes have been limited to amateur hobbyists putting celebrities' faces on porn stars' bodies and making politicians say funny things. However, it would be just as easy to create a deepfake of an emergency alert warning of an imminent attack, destroy someone's marriage with a fake sex video, or disrupt a close election by dropping a fake video or audio recording of one of a candidate days before an election.

The FBI warning comes amid concern that if manipulated media is allowed to proliferate unabated, conspiracy theories and maligned influence will become more and more mainstream. Lawmakers have recently enacted a series of laws that address deepfake technology, which frequently is used to harass women, through the creation of fake pornographic videos with the targets of harassment seemingly appearing in the footage. There are no limits to the places people can take things: recently a mother created a deepfake pornographic video of her daughter’s rivals on her cheerleading squad to discredit them.

The Biden administration is filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the US Supreme Court to side with a Pennsylvania school district over its ability to discipline students for online speech that takes place away from the school campus. The case, which focuses on a student's language and foul language in an upset over not making the varsity cheerleading team posted on Snapchat, could be heard in April, and a decision could be announced in the summer. Just one more reminder that whatever and wherever you post can be seen, recorded, and circulated to anyone. The results of this case will help define what rights students have regarding any off-campus posts.

Zoom fatigue is real, according to Géraldine Fauville, an assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who is part of a team of researchers studying the causes of video conferencing fatigue to better understand how to combat it. She says that “During video conferences, you have this impression that everyone on the screen is staring directly at you, so you have this feeling of being constantly the center of attention and that is just stressful in general, especially for long periods of time.” 

What can you do to counteract it?

• Try turning off your camera. Students should let teachers know if they feel they need to take a break. Teachers should also consider requiring cameras on only when it really adds something. If it’s not essential to see one another during the whole class, then maybe teachers should consider letting students disable the camera.
• Take a break from the video feed. Fauville recommends shrinking the size of your video conferencing window so it’s not taking up your full screen. It can also be a good idea to focus on something other than your screen periodically by turning your body away from your camera and monitor.
• Create a setup that encourages movement. Fauville says standing desks can help with mobility on video calls. You can walk in place and even pace back and forth a bit. Setting up your camera further away from you so that it captures more of the room can also allow you to move more without fear of going off frame. An external keyboard can help you sit further away as well, which can encourage movement and put more distance between you and your screen, decreasing the intensity of the eye contact your brain perceives from other participants.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has partnered with Kindergarten teacher Kim VanBrocklin on developing an app that uses games to detect red flags for dyslexia and assess reading readiness in children ages 4 to 8. The app, called Application for Readiness in Schools and Learning Evaluation, or APPRISE, uses an accessible and scalable method that they hope to make available worldwide at no cost. The screener evaluates response time, working memory, processing speed, executive functioning skills, sound-segmentation and alphabetic recognition through child-centered games. As soon as the games are completed, data is sent in real time to statisticians at MIT. Parents receive information about their child’s performance, and data points can be used by educators to tailor interventions or programming initiatives. Parents and educators can get more information about taking part in the study at www.appriseproject.org.

Last year brought a record number of US school-related cybersecurity incidents, some "resulting in school closures, millions of dollars of stolen taxpayer dollars, and student data breaches directly linked to identity theft and credit fraud," states a report presented at the K-12 Cybersecurity Leadership Symposium. The report encourages administrators to review their resiliency plans and should serve as a reminder to parents that you should know your school or district’s plan for a cybersecurity break and understand how parents are notified if a situation occurs.

Unlike most social media platforms, Twitter has never had a delete or edit feature for pubished tweets, but for years users have called on the platform to add an 'Edit' option so that they can correct those annoying grammatical errors. Twitter has repeatedly said that it's not going to happen, but now it looks like Twitter may offer a short window of time after pressing 'Tweet' to recall your missive. Besides correcting grammar or spelling, this may also let users heed misinformation labels that Twitter places on questionable Tweets or decide that those nasty or bullying comments really aren’t the best thing to send.

YouTube has added eight new children's shows, with 25 others in development, as part of $100 million fund for family and educational shows. This fund is a contrast to the current strategy of relying on targeted advertising to fund children's programming.  The shows are designed in consultation with child development and literacy education experts with diverse representation, and will be available in several languages. Last year, in alignment with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), YouTube announced that targeted ads would no longer be allowed on kids’ videos, while content aimed at younger users would also lose access to comments and other community features. 

With the video game industry reportedly now bigger than sports and movies combined, everyone from investors to A-list actors are jumping on the gaming bandwagon. Its social impact has immeasurable consequences, and even eclipses music as the most important aspect of youth culture. Gaming is all about connection: people who cannot come together in person are connecting through games. 

One hot new area that’s garnering the attention of investors, gamers, parents and fans alike is social tokens, a cryptocurrency specific to a person or brand. In the last six months, several gamers, streamers and Esports organizations have successfully launched their own social tokens in order to take the control of fan relationships away from big tech platforms. They’re experimenting with new forms of fan interactions and monetization opportunities with crypto. For example, Twitch streamer Alliestrasza is hosting Hearthstone tournaments with the winners receiving her ALLIE Coin, while StarCraft II Pro Player and variety streamer Vibe is running daily tournaments where gamers can “double their winnings” in tokens. Streaming house DownToQuest offers a token for fans to purchase physical merchandise, often charging less in coin value than its equivalent in US Dollars. While it's still early days, several gamers/streamers are already earning more than $10,000 per month via their social tokens. Global Esports organizations like Gen G. are also getting into the mix; launching their own social token to strengthen their relationship with fans, allowing them to directly engage their favorite teams and players, and become owners in their new virtual economies. If you have a young gaming fan at your house, social tokens is definitely a term to know and keep in mind.

A Northern District judge in California has approved Facebook's $650 million class-action settlement for the lawsuit regarding its photo-scanning feature. The lawsuit claimed that Facebook’s Tag Suggestions tool, which scanned faces in users’ photos and offered suggestions about who the person might be, stored biometric data without users’ consent in violation of a Illinois law. The payment, which will be distributed among roughly 1.6 million plaintiffs, is one of the largest of its kind and a good reminder that what you post becomes fair game for Facebook to use at their discretion.

The Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of online information researchers, recently published a comprehensive analysis of the false narrative of the presidential contest and recommended ways to avoid a repeat. The report concludes that while social media companies are not solely to blame for misinformation, the platforms did serve as hubs in which false narratives were incubated, reinforced and cemented. Two of the report’s suggestions for how companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can change to help create a healthier climate of information include holding people with outsized influence (think Trump and Kim Kardashian) to a higher bar, and asking social media companies to be transparent and consistent about their guidelines on misinformation and disinformation.

Google Earth – a free online tool -has been growing and developing for years and as a result, is now more powerful yet easier to use than ever. It also has more tools that work with it so parents and teachers can offer lots of learning experiences beyond geographic exploration alone. From diving into history through real-world sites to creating tours with clue-based gamification, there are lots of way to see the world up close and personal. Here’s how to make use of this resource.

There are four key US Supreme Court cases that govern students' speech in a school environment, according to Scott Johnson, law professor at Concord Law School. In a recent commentary, Johnson reflects on the current law, students’ privacy rights, and on the court's potential to expand the scope of the law when it hears the case of a high-schooler who was penalized for profanity-laced Snapchat posts about the school. As the law currently stands, speech that may be protected for adults outside of the school environment – like offensive or vulgar language – can be restricted for students inside of the school environment. This commentary is a must read for all parents ,because on some occasion your children may speak their mind online, and what is protected and what is not runs a very fine line.

A recent survey found that found high numbers of K-12 teachers are unfamiliar with the various forms of cyberattacks. For example, 48 percent of K-12 educators said they had no familiarity with "videobombing." Likewise, the same percentage said they didn't know what denial-of-service attacks were. Four in 10 (41 percent) were unfamiliar with ransomware attacks. More K-12 educators knew something about data breaches (75 percent) and phishing scams (79 percent), but these results show that parents cannot depend on schools and teachers to be up on the latest in cybersecurity threats, and may need to take the responsibility of making their children aware.

No matter how you look at it, YouTube has become an essential platform for most kids - potentially more important, and more influential, than any other TV channel or network. But YouTube is risky, with content rabbit holes that can take your kids into dangerous, and potentially harmful territory. That’s why YouTube developed YouTube Kids, its dedicated platform for youngsters that runs separate from the main app, and doesn't facilitate links to all YouTube content. However at some point, older kids will be keen to move on, and that can put parents in a challenging position.

To address this, YouTube has developed a new process that will enable parents to monitor their child's YouTube activity via a connected experience, while also giving them more privacy and independence.. Through this new option, parents will be able to choose from three levels of supervision  for their childrens' activity depending on age and maturity. YouTube says that in-app purchases will be disabled within this new experience, as well as creation and comments features, though parents will eventually have variable controls for each element. YouTube also notes that it will continue to evolve the tool over time to improve the options and tools available.

And now for something completely different! Sometimes the digital resources suggested here just have to be FUN! So it is with Iceberger, a simple interface that creates iceberg shapes out of users' doodles and shows how these structures might float in water. Give it a try ... it is pretty cool.

The House Energy & Commerce Committee has lined up the CEO's from Facebook, Google and Twitter to testify at a hearing on March 25 on "Misinformation and Disinformation Plaguing Online Platforms," signaling that self-regulation has failed. Public opinion is mixed on what Congress needs to do, but this hearing is a signal that Congress may now be willing to step in. The de-posting or flagging of some content on conservative Web sites, and the banning of then-President Trump from Facebook and Twitter, have raised conservative bias claims to another level. Others are concerned about falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine or debunked claims of election fraud, and the allowing misinformation to spread with real-life consequences for public health and safety.

Recent research is changing the way educators, parents and others view the potential of "nudging" text messages to motivate students to take action, such as applying for college or aid. In a study, published in the March 2021 issue of Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, researchers reveal that unless text messages are more customized to individual recipients, they are not very effective and that teens are less likely to pay attention unless they know who is sending the text.

Researchers tracked 500 teens over 10 years and found that an increase in the amount of time spent on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram was linked to an increase in long-term suicide risk among teenage girls, but not boys. The findings were published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Most of the risk pertained to girls who as young adolescents were already spending a lot of time using social media, TV and/or video games. As their screen time increased over the years, so did their risk for suicide by the time they hit their early- to mid-20s, the findings showed.

"Parents and teens should be open about their amount and type of media they're using, so that they can look out for warning signs, talk about worsening mood or suicidality, and reach out for help," researchers suggest. In the article researchers also stressed common-sense limits around electronic media use. For example, limiting use to less than two hours per day, and not using electronic media after a certain time at night since it can worsen sleep. They also urged parents to have open discussions about online bullying and online safety.

While this debate has gone on for some time, there are some educators and parents who seem to perceive audiobooks as less than worthy. In their minds, it is as if sound media does not provide the same “rigor” that print media does. Some parents have even reported that educators insinuate that listening to an audiobook is akin to cheating, rather than providing a most welcome and necessary path to story and information for kids who have visual impairments, dyslexia diagnoses, or learning disabilities. If you as a parent are facing this kind of prejudice or just looking for some great listens for you and your kids, you might be interested in reading a passing along this article entitled “Yes, Audiobooks Are Real Reading. Here Are the Best Ones for Kids.”

Tubular Labs reports that US residents spent 56% more time watching social videos on YouTube and Facebook in December 2020 than they did in February, an increase that rises to 97% for those over 45 years old. Influencers commanded the most attention, with 121 billion monthly minutes, followed respectively by traditional broadcasters and digital-first publishers. For the parents out there, it’s probably no surprise that within the kids’ category, Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes commanded the top placement with 59 million unique viewers per month, followed by PinkFong! Kids’ Songs and Stories (51.6 million). Sesame Street was a more distant third (30.5 million).

Looking at top media creators by the age and gender demographics of their audiences, there are some notable differences. For the 13-24 year-old male cohort, the top creators by average monthly unique viewers were Movieclips (14.1 million), WorldStar Hip Hop/WSHH (11 million) and WWE (8.3 million). For women in the same age group, Tasty won out (9.4 million), followed by 5-Minute Crafts (8.5 million) and Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes (6.6 million).