Parents and caretakers play integral roles in tweens’ lives, especially in teaching tweens how to responsibly and safely navigate an increasingly digitally integrated world. As social media usage grows in younger age groups, there is an imminent need to support youth to safely build healthy and productive habits and practice skills to navigate risks online. Despite the growth in available resources and educational interventions (e.g., digital literacy and citizenship curriculum and online guides), many of these resources are not tailored to accommodate parental perspectives and resource constraints due to socioeconomic factors , family structure, cultural alignment, digital competencies, and self-efficacy. For instance, parents may hold varying attitudes toward technology use, varying access to resources, and mitigation strategies that ultimately shape how they support their children in learning, developing, and practicing these skills. This project aims to empower parents in supporting tweens’ social media privacy education.
The team plans to apply these insights towards Social Media TestDrive, which was developed by our team in partnership with Common Sense Education and 4-H, for use by educators, families, and individuals in a variety of settings ranging from in-class or at home.
In Fall 2020, the team received a Facebook Research Award for People’s Expectations and Experiences with Digital Privacy to support this project.