By the time they're teenagers in America, 95 percent of children will have their own mobile device and will, on average, spend almost nine hours a day texting, playing games, posting to social media, watching videos, and more. With all this time spent online, tweens and teens are navigating a minefield of challenging issues, from sexting and cyberbullying to fake news and addictive design.
In response, Common Sense today launched the Digital Citizenship Curriculum for grades 6–8, available free to all schools through its flagship Common Sense Education platform.
The middle school curriculum includes lessons on:
- Digital Media and Your Brain: Common Sense's curriculum helps students understand the many ways digital media tries to hook us and what we can do about it to achieve a healthy balance.
- Sexting and Relationships: Common Sense's curriculum helps students think critically about self-disclosure in relationships and practice how they'd respond to a situation where sexting might happen.
- Hate Speech: Common Sense's curriculum helps tweens and teens understand how online hate speech hurts people and communities.
- Identifying Fake News: Common Sense's curriculum helps students learn how to evaluate the credibility of what they're finding online.
For more information, visit https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship.
