Status of Women committee  I'd like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to present our research and our resources today. Since 2001, MediaSmarts has been conducting a research report entitled “Young Canadians in a Wired World”. It looks at Canadian students' experiences with networked t

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. A study was done just last year with pre-service teachers, or teacher candidates, in Ontario. They said overwhelmingly that they did not feel they were being prepared to deal with the various digital issues they were going to face in the classroom. One of the ones t

Information & Ethics committee  I will add very briefly that whatever regulation or legislation takes place, it is really important that the education piece be there, to make sure young people are aware of the rights they have under legislation or regulation. Research has shown that a large proportion of youn

Information & Ethics committee  I'd like to add to that. It's important to know as well that when young people go online, not only are they subject to the same privacy risks as adults, but they're actually subject to greater risks. We know from research done around the world that young people are tracked onlin

Information & Ethics committee  Just to clarify, it's our research that is studying grades 4 to 11. There are a number of reasons for this. One is so that we can compare data with earlier surveys that covered that age range. But our resources cover the full K to 12 curriculum. We've made an effort in the last

Information & Ethics committee  Another point where it is relevant is that educating young people is only half the job. The other half is educating parents and grandparents and the general public. That's definitely a role the federal government can play. Our own research showed that one of the reasons parents

Information & Ethics committee  To add to that, you had asked how it is we can teach privacy skills to different ages. I'll answer, just from our perspective, that all of our resources are created by educators as well as by people who are experts in digital literacy issues, including privacy. That means everyt

Information & Ethics committee  Legislation may well play a role. Certainly our position is that young people do need to understand what they're agreeing to. They need to understand when they use any service what information they are giving out, what information about their activities may be collected, and what

Information & Ethics committee  I'd like to add that you're absolutely right that simply providing tools to protect privacy is not enough. We know this from a study that was done at Columbia University in the United States. It found that of the participants in the study, and these were students ages 18 to 25,