Thanks, Niki.
I have to apologize for my passion. My passion comes out as a parent and also as an educator.
I work in the third-largest school district in British Columbia, and my role as a digital literacy and online safety educator comes into play. When going out to schools or talking to parents.... If you think about it, who has the ears of children every single day? It's educators in the school system.
We work in the prevention method and then the end result of a crime being committed. We talk to kids as young as four or five years old in preschool, pre-kindergarten or kindergarten, and there's a time to talk about online safety, social and emotional learning, respect and how to interact with others. That is the core, and you build upon it year after year.
Working with a variety of teachers all over the place, we find that some teachers aren't getting it. They aren't seeing the importance. They feel that reading, writing, social studies and science are more important than teaching about digital literacy, online safety and citizenship.
We need to ensure that this is done in the schools and that we are talking to our kids and, more importantly, to parents. Parents out there are unknowing. They're handing devices to their kids as early as seven and eight years old, and then they're complaining that this or that happened or whatever. We need to educate, and we need to bring more awareness. The question is this: How are we going to do that?
My role as an educator and as a parent is to get that information out to those who need it. Yes, the tech industry and governments all need to be part of that, but this is multi-level. If you want to look at bubbles all around, there are multiple things that need to be done in this area.