Media literacy lessons will help kids navigate internet safely

Like tens of millions of pupils in Kenya, younger Eva Jerotich has access to her mother’s smartphone. At only 10 decades of age, she is capable to navigate its a lot of applications to entry tens of millions of games and videos. On most evenings, she requires the telephone from her mom and shortly she is correct at the centre of the internet jungle all by herself at least for the future a single hour. Her 15-12 months-old sister, Mayanne Chepkoech, has her possess mobile phone and has accounts on Facebook and Instagram wherever she has developed a community of primarily faceless mates with whom she chats endlessly.

Eva and Maryanne are just two out of millions of little ones in Kenya’s homes who have free of charge accessibility to the net through smartphones. In a term, they are in a jungle without a manual.

Marc Prensky, the American author and speaker on instruction, labelled them digital natives — all those born in the information age and are “native speakers of the digital language of desktops, online video game titles and the internet’’ — in comparison to the digital immigrants who were not born through the digital transformation but have adopted most features of the technological innovation. If the net is certainly a lawless jungle that is house to thousands and thousands of internet sites with a blizzard of facts, videos, game titles and all sorts of on the internet things to do all lumped into a single absolutely free-for-all borderless and infinite superhighway, why are we permitting our children to even get close to it by itself?

A recent examine by the Directorate of Children’s Services aptly described how children are exposed to pornography, cyberbullying, sextortion, sexting and other sorts of exploitation, which include dwell streaming of child sexual abuse.  

“In Kenya, youngsters have lower stages of awareness of the threats posed by the world-wide-web, and minimal information about how to get aid or report concerns/disclosures. Most youngsters do fully grasp the risks in relation to cyberbullying but are less knowledgeable of the likely threats of sexual problems online,’’ says the investigation.

Facts from the Communications Authority of Kenya demonstrates that 40 for each cent of the Kenyan inhabitants have obtain to the web by means of cellular phones. This is due to the fact smartphones are less expensive and a lot more affordable and the world-wide-web is quick starting to be as very easily out there as is electrical energy. What is as clear as crystal is that wise phones, tablets and all way of electronic devices are not going away. They can only get slicker, far more irresistible and even indispensable.

The online much too will develop into much more ubiquitous and invisible. Enhanced connectivity will continue on to generate a electronic transformation not only in industries and business enterprise but also at property, switching how people relate to just one one more, share info and take in waves soon after waves of new information. Simply because this data is normally not controlled or verified, naïve usage of it can only be disastrous.

However, any guardian fearful of the damaging consequences of the online on their small children does not have the choice of keeping them absent from cellular phones or electronic gadgets, for they have attained a amount of indispensability that is extremely hard to overlook. The only sure-fire way of shielding them from web crooks and lies is by empowering them to distinguish involving what is legitimate or wrong what is beneficial and what is rubbish.

The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a rush for increased internet connectivity and smartphones to give children access to on the web classes immediately after all educational institutions have been shut for shut to a yr. This designed a condition wherever numerous kids were permitted no cost access to the net unsupervised. So they set on a journey of experience and exploration that engendered an obsession with the world wide web driven by the have to have to surface stylish and stylish.

Granted, the online is normally controlled by a vary of permissions and restrictions and most electronic devices have security cutbacks, but these are normally viewed as curtailments to independence alternatively than protection characteristics.

This is why the authorities have to critically think about the introduction of media literacy classes in the school curriculum. Due to the fact the youth obtain on their own at the centre of major technological changes, they are bombarded by media with all kinds of all set and unfiltered details. When the legacy media is tightly managed and follows effectively recognized traditions and values, the social media is a absolutely free-for-all atmosphere wherever everything goes.

Youngsters and teens are notably susceptible to media impact as they glance up to numerous platforms for facts, leisure and social networks. Media literacy programmes in schools could support youngsters appraise and deconstruct information for its accuracy and benefit. These kinds of classes can give youngsters analytical and crucial thinking tools to assistance them grow to be informed citizens who can add to a healthier democratic modern society as opposed to helpless gullible folks at the mercy of a closely commercialised and in a lot of scenarios, unethical Planet Vast World-wide-web.

A very good place to get started would be to make media literacy skills a main subject matter in teacher training curricula.Failure to keep our youths’ hands via this bewildering world wide web wilderness will lessen them to helpless zombies without the need of a semblance of identity.