Digital Smarts Blog

Still worried about falling into a “fake news” trap by reading or passing along something that isn’t factual? A non partisan effort, by a group hosted at Santa Clara University, called The Trust Project is working to address this situation by helping online users distinguish between reliable journalism and promotional content or misinformation. Recently, Facebook started offering “Trust Indicators” which is a new icon that will appear next to articles in your News Feed. When you click on this icon, you can read information the publisher has shared about their organization’s “ethics and other standards, the journalists’ backgrounds, and how they do their work,” according to an announcement from The Trust Project.

It is a work in progress with Facebook, Google, Bing and Twitter and other international new organizations committing to displaying these indicators, although not all implementations are in place.

The onus to figure out if something is fake though is still on the user. Instead of labeling content as disputed, Trust Indicators allow users to learn more about the organization behind the news and come to their own conclusions about the content. Whether it will actually help in the long-run, of course, remains to be seen.

On average, young people (ages 16- 34) have 8.7 social media accounts. According to a survey by GlobalWebIndex, more than 89,000 people across 40 countries between the ages of 16 and 64 have these accounts. The survey also found that Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are the most popular ways to communicate out of the over 42 social media networks available. Video watching on social media on sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat also continues to be a growing trend with 56% of Facebook users saying they had watched at least one video online in the last month.

A Medium post and New York Times article recently highlighted an ongoing problem with YouTube Kids.  There are bizarre and disturbing videos, like the popular character Peppa the Pig drinking bleach or the characters from Paw Patrol getting killed off.  These videos, aimed at young children, are found by using relevant key words and popular children’s character’s names. Now, YouTube says it is putting in place a new process to age-restrict these types of videos in the main YouTube app. Videos from the main platform will not appear on YouTube Kids for several days, giving extra time for users to flag questionable content and for teams to review flagged videos. One suggestion is that until this problem is resolved parents should be very mindful of the kinds of videos kids are consuming on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

Social Media, Apps, Homework, Digital Savvy, Digital Literacy

Images increasingly are taking the place of words on social media. This is a trend known as "picting," writes educator Chrissy Romano-Arrabito in an article for middle school teachers, but a good resource for parents as well. Romano-Arrabito reminds adults that new studies tell us that 90% of K-12 classroom time in the U.S. is spent with text-based materials, and 10% with image-based materials; but outside the classroom, 90% is spent with image-based materials and 10% with text-based materials. So what does that mean? In a cliché, “a pictures is worth a thousand words” Picting has arrived and to be literate kids will need to know how to create and manipulate images and video in very sophisticated ways to reach their peers – the adults of the future - and understand their world.

What can you do to help your kids use social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and other apps in productive ways? Romano-Arrabito suggests things like using Instagram to do a mini book report or chronicle a school project. Snapchat is an easy way for kids to video themselves speaking and test themselves on new vocabulary in a foreign language. YouTube is a great way to do a creative book report by creating a commercial for a book. Her article is full of other digitally literate ideas for helping kids use technology in creative and sophisticated ways.

Nearly 6% of US teens said they bullied themselves online, according to a study done by the Florida Atlantic University's Cyberbullying Research Center. The findings, based on a national survey of about 5,600 students ages 12 to 17, showed that boys were more likely to report digital self-harm. Additionally, the risk of digital self-harm was three times higher among non-heterosexual youths and 12 times higher among those who were already or had been cyberbullying victims. Those who engaged in self-inflicted cyberbullying offered explanations including self-hate, attention, wanting to appear victimized to justify cyberbullying others, feeling depressed or suicidal, trying to be funny or make fun of themselves, and boredom. 

Researchers are calling this behavior "digital self-harm” and the trend was brought to researchers' attention by the death of Hannah Smith, a 14 year old from Leicestershire, England, who hanged herself after months of apparent online harassment. After her death, officials from Ask.fm, a social media site where users can ask each other anonymous questions, found that 98% of the messages sent to Smith came from the same IP address as the computer she used. Many other sites like Tumblr and the now defunct Formspring also have had an anonymous question feature, which could allow teens to anonymously send themselves hurtful messages and then publicly respond.

We continue to need to talk to kids about how to evaluate sources online and off, but we all should probably know more about the history of the hoaxes, plagiarism and fake news. A new book entitled Bunk – The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, PostFacts, and Fake News by Kevin Young draws connections between the days of P.T.Barnum and the 21^st century and compares terms like swindler and confidence man to contemporary buzzwords like plagiarism, truthiness and fake news. More than just telling tales of hoaxes revealed, Young discusses the theory of the hoax and the effects of the deception on politics, online news and everyday life then and now

While the article Teaching Kids to Argue—Respectfully is written for teachers, the resources listed and the ideas included can be helpful for parents who are trying to help kids learn how to argue fairly and respectfully. As one teacher in the article puts it, “If left unchallenged, high-profile examples of name calling or bullying may leave kids to think this is what discourse should sound like. We need to talk with them about why it’s shocking. What’s not acceptable in our community? We don’t want students to be gaslighted into thinking that this is just the way things are.”While the article Teaching Kids to Argue—Respectfully is written for teachers, the resources listed and the ideas included can be helpful for parents who are trying to help kids learn how to argue fairly and respectfully. As one teacher in the article puts it, “If left unchallenged, high-profile examples of name calling or bullying may leave kids to think this is what discourse should sound like. We need to talk with them about why it’s shocking. What’s not acceptable in our community? We don’t want students to be gaslighted into thinking that this is just the way things are.”

The article points out that media, tweets, articles, and video clips need to be analyzed by kids so they can recognize various points of view on issues and recognize that we all suffer from confirmation basis. Also, we strongly tend to seek information that confirms our own judgment, evaluation and interpretation. Take a look at this handout from Project Sharp to help guide your discussion with your kids about bias.

Students exposed to blue light from computer screens or other digital devices including smart phones, got less restful sleep in a study by researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel. Data in the study show that, besides getting 16 fewer minutes of sleep, those exposed to blue light from screens also woke up more often during the night and woke up groggy in the morning.

Children younger than eight are more likely to have their own tablet device now than in 2011. These children are spending an average of 48 minutes on those devices (up from five minutes in 2011, according to an updated report from Common Sense Media). Findings also show this same increase across all income levels. What does this mean for parents? It is even more important to model good behavior when it comes to digital devices. That means putting your phone away at mealtime, turning screens off before bedtime, and talking about what kids are watching and playing.

According to a new survey by Pew Research Center entitled, “The Future of Truth and Misinformation online”, most Americans suspect that made-up news is having an impact. About two-in-three U.S. adults (64%) say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. This sense is shared widely across incomes, education levels, partisan affiliations and most other demographics. Though they sense these stories are spreading confusion, Americans express a fair amount of confidence in their own ability to detect fake news, with about four-in-ten (39%) feeling very confident that they can recognize news that is fabricated and another 45% feeling somewhat confident.

Some Americans also say they themselves have shared fake news. Overall, 23% say they have shared a made-up news story, with 14% saying they shared a story they knew was fake at the time and 16% having shared a story they later realized was fake. When it comes to how to prevent the spread of fake news, many Americans expect social networking sites, politicians and the public itself to do their share. Fully 45% of U.S. adults say government, politicians and elected officials bear a great deal of responsibility for preventing made-up stories from gaining attention, 43% say this is the public’s responsibility, and 42% say it is part of the job of social networking sites and search engines.

The number of people who get at least some of their news from US social media sources continues to grow, a Pew Research Center report states. For example, 74% of Twitter users said they get news from the site, compared with 52% in 2013, while consumers of other platforms offered a similar trend. More people on YouTube, a platform that’s not necessarily known for news content, are also turning to the site for news. In 2013, 20% said they used YouTube for new. Fast forward to 2017, and that number has increased to 32%. News-seeking among Snapchat’s users also increased by 12 percentage points between 2016 and 2017.

New technology called Fly Sense is designed to pick up on unusual sounds, such as doors slamming or fighting, in school bathrooms to identify whether students are being bullied. The technology also can identify whether students are using e-cigarettes in the bathroom. Several schools across the country are trying out the technology this school year including the New York City Schools. It will be interesting to see what privacy advocates have to say about it.

Whether you think your child is going to go in coding career direction or not, it is essential for today’s young people in understanding why technology can do what it does, what it does well and not so well, and why it is so difficult for it to do other things as an extension of their digital literacy. To that end, you might want to take a look at the games in the article Coding Across the Curriculum featured on the Edutopia site. While written for teachers, the article cites a variety of games and apps for all ages that parents can employ just as easily and even suggests things like having kids “build an animation in Scratch [a web-based coding language for building animations and games] for their next book report—a modern, digital update for the shoebox diorama. “

No two cases of bullying are alike and some students are more likely to be bullied than others. That’s what a new survey by the nonprofit organization YouthTruth found after posing questions to more than 180,000 students across 412 schools between 2012 and 2017. Of those surveyed, seventy three percent said that most harassment occurs in person, while 23 percent reported being bullied online. The biggest reason being reported for why the bullying occurred is “how kids looked” and the group that suffers the most, is students who don’t identify with a specific gender. In the world of schools and districts that struggle with policies on bullying, the results may help teachers be more proactive or construct more consistent approaches for preventing abuse.

Forty-one percent of educators say students learn faster with technology, but 78% say teachers need more training to use those tools in the classroom, according to a survey from SAM Labs. The survey found that 65% of teachers say technology use has improved student performance in math, while 56% report seeing improvements in reading and writing. Twenty four percent said that they think their students know more about technology than they do. That last percentage can be a problem as kids find schools and teachers “behind the times” and then feel they can circumvent educators by cheating or bullying.

Now that nearly two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, we all need to stop and think about how our biases and our exposure to misinformation affects the way we perceive the news and even how we fight against false claims. The New York Times recently featured an article entitled How Fiction Becomes Fact on Social Media that focuses on just those concerns.

The article reminds us that it is our, often subconscious, psychological biases that make so many of us vulnerable to misinformation. Skepticism about what we read as “news” online is a good start. However, our own innate biases will let certain things pass as “likely,” researchers have found. We all need to remember that Facebook, Google, and Twitter have their own skin in the game and that they are serving up “juicy” news and information that keeps us coming back for more. It’s so easy to pass along stories before you have a chance to really think about them or look at the source. Repetition can also make a story seems credible if you read the same news headline over and over again. As one expert put it, “We overweight information from people we know.” This Sounds like the way news was passed around back in high school, doesn’t it?

Instruction using gestures, whether performed by a live teacher or digital avatar, may improve student learning, according to research by Susan Wagner, Cook at the University of Iowa. For example, a teacher explaining a math equation while gesturing to both sides of the equal sign, helps students make the connection much more quicker than a teacher who drones on with arms down in front of a class.

Cook is among a cadre of researchers who study learning in the context of “embodied cognition”, which is the theory that our thoughts are shaped by the physical experiences of our body. According to this view, even when we think about abstract ideas, our brains link them to concrete, physical things that we experience through our hands, our senses and other body parts. This is even if the experience is virtual rather than physical.

Tbh, which is a teen speak acronym for “to be honest,” bills itself as the only anonymous app with positive vibes for teens. The app isn't a standard messaging app like Sarahah that has become almost synonymous with cyberbullying. Instead, users are presented with a series of pre-programmed prompts about their friends like, "Should DJ every party" or "Hotter than the sun", and four options for friends (that come out of their Contacts list) that best fit that description. The name of the app follows a similar trend among teens who use the phrase "tbh" on Instagram to say something nice about their friends. There is no typing by the user required or allowed which keeps the attributes offered up about friends positive.

So what do you as a parent need to know about the app? Try reading 5 Things to Know About 'tbh,' a New Anonymity App Popular Among Teens to get updated and stay tuned in. Someone always seems to be able to turn even the most positive apps into cyberbullying tools.

Children in lower-income families spend more time watching TV and using electronic devices than kids in more affluent homes, according to a report released recently from Common Sense Media. The nonprofit group followed the viewing habits of more than 1,400 children nationwide. Ages 8 and under found that less-affluent youngsters spend nearly three-and-a-half hours daily watching TV and using varied devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops and video game players. By comparison, kids in higher-income homes spend just under two hours on such activities. The offspring of better-educated parents also spend less time with media (1 hour, 37 minutes) compared with children of those with less education (2 hours, 50 minutes).

Should teachers give “tech breaks” to students in class? That’s an interesting new idea proposed by Larry D. Rosen, emeritus professor of psychology at California State University-Dominguez Hill. He proposes that digital natives (those born between 1995 and 2010 who have been given that moniker because of their comfort with digital devices) should be offered a one-minute tech break in the classroom to check and send messages on their phones. More specifically, "Instructors should initially schedule the breaks every 15 minutes, [Rosen] says, but then gradually increase the time between breaks to teach students to focus."

Outrageous? Rosen points out that students have a very short attention span and that they do typically check their phones every 15 minutes anyway. So, should teachers give in to that? Or should they have higher expectations as Barbara King, a professor emeritus at William and Mary, writes on the National Public Radio site in an article entitled Should College Professors Give 'Tech Breaks' In Class?