Young people and parents everywhere should know that, where youth rights are concerned, Europe just took a big step backward. Even though every single one of the European Union's 28 countries has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose Article 12 states that "children" (people under 18) have the right to express their views in all matters affecting them, a European agreement … [Read more...] about Europe’s big step backward for youth rights online, offline
Literacy & Citizenship
Counterspeech: New online safety tool with huge potential
Susan Benesch, founder of The Dangerous Speech project, tells the story of how worried people in Kenya were in the run-up to their national election in 2013. Dangerous, inflammatory speech around the previous election in 2007 had led to widespread violence involving more than 1,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of people being displaced, she said in a talk at Harvard’s Berkman Center, where she … [Read more...] about Counterspeech: New online safety tool with huge potential
Finally defining digital citizenship: Help from top researchers
If it's to have any real impact, “digital citizenship” needs to be clearly and simply defined. That’s what the US’s leading youth online risk researchers propose in the latest study on digital citizenship. In fact, the University of New Hampshire researchers made three recommendations: Separate it from digital literacy (Internet and technical skills) and cyberbullying prevention, which are … [Read more...] about Finally defining digital citizenship: Help from top researchers
10 tips for digital citizens’ parents
Actually, parents are digital citizens too. If they spend any time in digital spaces. At least for as long as we residents of this networked world are still putting "digital" in front of "citizenship." I suspect that won't be for very long, but we're here, now, in an interesting, global discourse about what citizenship means now in an increasingly networked world – especially for youth, the people … [Read more...] about 10 tips for digital citizens’ parents
A prime minister & a professor: True connecting in a digital age
Two messages in two media – video and text – by a prime minister and a professor got me, and I'm sure many others, thinking about the good, not-so-good and necessary connecting we human beings are doing on digital devices now, at both international and personal levels. I haven't heard a politician from any country speak of using social media the way India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi did at … [Read more...] about A prime minister & a professor: True connecting in a digital age