By Antigone Davis, Global Head of Safety, and Karuna Nain, Global Safety Programs Manager
Today we’re launching our Digital Literacy Library, a collection of lessons to help young people think critically and share thoughtfully online. There are 830 million young people online around the world, and this library is a resource for educators looking to address digital literacy and help these young people build the skills they need to safely enjoy digital technology.
The ready-to-use lessons in the Library are drawn from the Youth and Media team at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, which has made them freely available worldwide under a Creative Commons license.
Developed for educators of youth ages 11 to 18, the lessons incorporate learnings from over 10 years of academic research by the Youth and Media team, and they reflect the voices of young people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, geographies, and educational levels. The lessons address thematic areas such as privacy and reputation, identity exploration, security, safety and wellbeing, and more.
We know that educators already manage busy classrooms and learning environments. The lessons were designed to make it as easy as possible to integrate them into formal and informal learning environments — letting educators know how much time each lesson will take and providing written prompts to follow along the way. These lessons work well together or on their own, in after-school programs or at home, and can be modified to incorporate educators’ own experiences and ideas.
The 18 lessons are currently in English and available in the US and they are coming soon in 45 additional languages. They are free to download from Facebook’s Safety Center and Berkman Klein’s Digital Literacy Resource Platform. We’re working with non-profit organizations around the world to adapt these lessons and create additional new ones for educators globally.
The Digital Literacy Library is the latest addition to the Safety Center. Earlier this year we added our Youth Portal, which includes tips for young people on things like security and reporting content, as well as advice and first-person accounts from teens around the world about how they are using technology.
For further context and information, please visit Youth and Media’s FAQ; additional lessons developed by Youth and Media are available on Berkman Klein’s Digital Literacy Resource Platform.