Defining Digital Citizenship For Families

Four Rules For A Family Code

Weekly Feed Check-Ins For Teens

No-Go List For Group Chats

Scripts For Mean Chats And DMs

Accountability And No “Just Joking”

Turning Online Energy Into Civic Action

Caitlin 0:28

Hey friends, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to How to Be a Grown Up. This is the show for moms who are actively opposed to becoming the trolls in the comments section and don't want their kids being those trolls either. Today I'm diving into digital citizenship. So applying what we've learned so far in this whole practical resistance series, like all the way, you know, this is like almost 10 episodes of this, um, to the online space. So before we do that though, I want to make sure uh are you subscribed? Have you subscribed to this show yet? If you haven't, please make sure you hit follow. I'm so happy that people are starting to share this show. I'm starting to get more listens every day. Super exciting. Please, if you like my show and if you like what I'm doing, share it, spread the word, and tell your friends to follow. But let's get into it. So, of course, I'm referencing some nonviolent communication strategies here. So I've got all of those links we've talked about in the past, plus a couple of other ones that are relatively new for me. There's an episode of Peaceful Parenting, The Power of Nonviolent Communication by Stephanie Fernandez. It's a podcast, so I'll link to that in the show notes. Um, the Cayuga Centers for Using Nonviolent Communication with Your Kids, the Media Education Lab, Media Literacy Now, Youth Networks, and the Center for Civic Education. So all of these will be linked in the blog post for the episode. I can't put too many links in the show notes, but they'll all be there. So please go check them out if you would like to do a deeper dive into any of these resources and see where I got my information from. Okay, so let's talk about what digital citizenship means for real families. If media literacy is the, is this real or fake vibe that we were talking about a couple of weeks ago, digital citizenship is the who do we become after we click post? Or who are we when we're clicking post online, right? So I'm talking about digital citizenship as how we show up online. And the ideal digital citizen is one who shows up in a safe way, in a kind way, in a responsible way for ourselves and also for others. So being a responsible digital citizen also means you're building on that media literacy thing, like spotting misinformation and using nonviolent communication skills when we're upset with something that we see online. You should remember and know that kids are practicing identity, empathy, and power every single day in DMs, in group chats, whether adults are talking about it explicitly with their kids or not. So it's really important that we do have these explicit conversations because the skills that kids are practicing are the people that they're going to be when they're online. So I was doing some digging and I found some really great rules for an online code of conduct for you and your family. This is like four shared principles that everyone, including you as the adult, can use and hopefully model, right? And you can say to your kids, this isn't just for you, it's for me too. We're all working on being decent humans on the internet at the same time. And maybe it will encourage you to think before you post. Maybe not. Who knows? Either way, you can put this on the fridge or on your notes app. Maybe if your kids are old enough to be digital citizens, hopefully you have a shared space where you can keep these and refer back to. And you can also discuss them at a family meeting, which is what we talked about in the last episode. So here we go. First rule: we pause before we post or share. Especially when something makes us angry or scared or feel a little smug. This was what Ariella talked about in that media literacy episode. Um, emotional spikes should just trigger an extra check, right? And she did mention that quite a few times. So if you haven't listened to that episode, uh, that was episode 194 on media literacy. Go back and listen to that. It was a really good one. Second rule we don't dehumanize people, we don't call people names, we don't use slurs or lines like those people are trash, even when we strongly disagree. Three, we protect our safety and the safety of others. We don't share our personal information ever. Uh schools, addresses, locations, phone numbers without consent. And we leave conversations that feel unsafe. Last one, we repair when we mess up. If we post something that's harmful or wrong, we either delete it if it requires deleting, apologize always, and learn and repair the damage that we have done. That's what learning means. So these are ways to apply those four rules. Um, they don't require some sort of full curriculum that you have to sit down and teach your kids. Um, we're just gonna practice these things daily. We're gonna do the pause before share. We're gonna all practice this and make it a habit. The rule is if a post makes you feel very mad or scared or superior, there's probably a reason. And you pause and you ask, just like Ariella mentioned, who made this? What do they want me to feel or do? And how do they know? As in, how do they know what this is? This is true, right? Again, this goes back to those media literacy frameworks that connect critical thinking to civic engagement that Ariella discussed in that episode. Please go back and listen to it. It was really good. Okay, the next thing. During those weekly family meetings, check-in for teens and tweens who are willing. Uh I would suggest doing this whether or not they are willing. Just saying. But you're gonna sit side by side and you're gonna do this feed check-in where each person is gonna pick one post or video that they want to talk about. And then you're gonna ask some questions. Why do you think the algorithm showed this to you? That's a good question. How does this make you feel? Is this the kind of thing you'd want to be known for sharing? Oh. Loved that question when I saw that. And then you're gonna model what you mean. So you're gonna pick something, it doesn't even have to be during this meeting. You can say, like, just in passing, you know, I was about to comment something real spicy on that post, but I'm gonna just put my phone down and touch crabs. Because you might need to do that, right? Or I'm fact-checking this because this doesn't ring true for me. And I just need to make sure I don't spread something that isn't true. And I love the just saying it in passing because then it looks like it's unintentional, but it's totally intentional. And kids see that and they're gonna do what you do. Love doing that. And then you're gonna have a family no-go list, right? So together as a group, you're gonna name what crosses the line here: like personal attacks, dogpiling, doxing, not okay, cruel jokes about someone's body or identity. And if we see this happening in a group chat or in comments, these are no-go for us. So we're gonna scroll past it, we're gonna mute it, we're gonna leave it, or we're gonna come and talk to a grown-up, we're not gonna join in. Now, as adults, most of us, like most of us, can handle ourselves, right? But kids need a little help. And I've found that as an adult, I often need help giving my kid that help, right? So here are some words to give your kids for group chats, for DMs, for comment section drama. And I sort of have these based on that nonviolent communication spin that we've been talking about. Just remember, as always, with me, none of these are scripts that you have to recite perfectly. Your kids don't have to recite them perfectly. These are just options to give you some ideas. So for when a group chat turns mean, because it inevitably will. Kids could say, I'm really not okay with making fun of that person. I'm just gonna leave this combo. They could actually physically type that out, I'm going to leave. They could say, This just doesn't feel right to me. I'm muting this thread. Y'all are too much. My favorite option is the just go. There's no need to say anything. You can leave if you want, right? And in this situation, if they just and if any of this, right? In this group chat turning mean thing, I would encourage you as the parent to tell your kid to blame you, the parent. Here's what I mean. When I was teaching, I would tell my kids that they could always come talk to me when they were uncomfortable sitting next to a friend in class. Maybe that friend is like annoying as all get out, fun, like outside of the classroom, but really annoying in it, or they talk too much, or they are constantly like poking them or touching them or taking their stuff or all that other dumb stuff. And I would see it and I would pull the kid aside and I would say, like, listen, if you don't want to sit next to that person, let like I'm happy to be the one who separates you guys. And what I'll do is I'll move you and not the troublemaker so that it looks like, you know, you're you didn't do anything like to tattle on anyone, right? You you weren't tattling. So if they were willing, I'd actually move them publicly, right? So I would say, like, if you really want me to sell this, the best thing that I can do is I can see it. I can watch you like being the person who's like responding, and then I can say, okay, little one, get up. You're gonna sit over here. And if I do it publicly, then it's really, really selling that they are in trouble with me, and that's why I'm moving their seat, not that they came to me and said, Can you please move my seat? Right. It's kind of like when you hear about those families who have a like a no questions asked text policy, like text me an ex if you are at a place you don't want to be and you need me to come get you, and I will call you and I will yell at you on the phone and I will come pick you up right then. It's sort of that vibe. So you can do that here. You can have your kids say, you know, hey, uh, my mom or dad or caregiver, whoever they may be, checks my messages. And when they saw that, they made me leave the group chat. And you can even have the kid be like, have the kid say, hey, this is kid's mom, I'm not cool with any of this, my kid's out, and just remove them that way. Right? All about the blame the parent situation. It really helps kids a lot. If a kid sees like some sketchy or upsetting content, similar thing, right? If they if it comes from a friend, they can say, like, hey, that kind of stuff makes me uncomfortable, can you please not send that to me? Or again, hey, my mom checks my messages, don't send that. I'm gonna get in trouble. Or you got me in trouble and now I don't have my phone. Something like that, right? They can also turn to a trusted adult and say, I got something in my DMs that I don't know how to handle. Can I show this to you? And hopefully you're the kind of parent that, or you have trusted adults in your life that they can go to you or another person that they trust and share that. Now, when they realize that they joined in, oof, this is rough. Like, this is a big deal for me because accountability is a big piece of this, and they need to understand that they have to make it right. They could say something like, I said something that I regret in the group chat, I'm really sorry, I'm gonna delete it, I'm gonna clear it up, and I'm gonna apologize publicly in the group chat. The one thing I want to caution you or kids about is that it was a joke is not an acceptable way to clear up what you said in that group chat. Jokes that do that to people that you regret because they're not really a joke are messed up. All they do is minimize accountability because it was a joke. And when you do that, when someone says it was a joke to you, what they're doing is shifting the blame to the person who is insulted, because that way it's the person who was insulted's fault that they can't take a joke. So encourage your kid to not default to it was a joke, because it's not a joke. You might have thought you were being funny, but it wasn't a joke. Doing that, acknowledging that you hurt someone, mirrors that NVC repair, that nonviolent style of acknowledging the feeling and stating what you need and then making a new request and learning something. For teens who are dealing with misinformation, I would encourage them to say something like, Hey, that post is wild, right? Before we like go too far down the rabbit hole here, before we start arguing, can we check this other source that I found about this? I really don't want to fight over something that isn't even true. So definitely doing that modeling that we talked about before, where you say something like, man, you know, I was about to comment something, but I'm gonna fact check it first, is a big help here. All right, bringing this back, you know what I love about digital citizenship, which is gonna sound so nerdy of me? It ties back into all of those lanes that I talked about for activism in episode 191, which was called Pick Your Lane. If you haven't heard that, please go back and listen. But here's what we know about strong media literacy. Studies have shown that strong media literacy actually can support real-world civic engagement. So, like contacting officials and joining causes and participating in communities in a meaningful and thoughtful way. And what we also know about posting is that it's just one tool and it's not the only tool, and it's not a political action. Do you remember the black Instagram profile squares for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020? Yikes, right? Like that's not political action. That's a post or a profile picture change. It doesn't actually result in any meaningful change. So I mean, you can even use that example if you want. Go for it. But what you need to do is actually make the connection between the digital citizenship piece and the practical civic engagement piece. Here's how you do that. So, like, let's say that there's some sort of heated online debate about maybe a school issue or whatever. You can then say, man, you're pretty fired up about this. Do you want to take that energy and send an email to the school board? Making that connection for your kid. What a powerful thing to do. After seeing a mutual aid request, let's see if there's some sort of small way we can help. Maybe we share with some context, maybe we donate$5, maybe we drop off an item. All things we can do to help. If they see disinformation online about some sort of local event, maybe they were there for it, maybe it was down the street, maybe it's their state. You could say maybe we can share a calm, factual post from the official source or from a trusted source that we know has a reputation for telling the truth, instead of just arguing in the comments. I love the idea of taking these things that kids are seeing and actually turning them into a teachable moment that they can then apply to other parts of their life. So, so cool. And to be clear, as I wrap this up, digital citizenship doesn't mean never posting anything spicy again. Because Lord knows I feel the urge to post spicy things regularly. And sometimes I forget to pause and I post it. It doesn't happen often, but it does. It just means that you're asking yourself, is this helping build the kind of world I want to live in and that I want my kid to live in? Or am I just adding to the noise and adding to the negativity on the internet? Just something to think about. Next week, uh, I'm actually going to take a week to think about what I want to do with this series and maybe go uh just kind of figure out what my next direction is. But I am very open to hearing your ideas about what I should tackle next. I've done so many things on this practical resistance piece, and there are definitely more ways to go, but also, you know, open to hearing from you guys. So please do share your thoughts. I have a send-me-a-text uh line there. You feel free to do that. I do get those text messages, so feel free to send your ideas. I'd love that. In the meantime, next week, I am gonna uh share the episode that I was on of the Uncomfy podcast. It was really fun meeting that team and having a conversation with Dr. Julie about finding out about my own ADHD diagnosis through something that happened to my child. So stay tuned for that. It's coming next week. Subscribe now so you don't miss it. Love you mean it. Be a good digital citizen and bye.