Hitting the Books: Digital youth activism can help save America from itself | Engadget

In Digital for Good, author Richard Culatta walks parents through many of the common pitfalls their kids may face when venturing into the internet wilds and how to best help them navigate these potential problems.

Excerpted from Digital For Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World by Richard Culatta.

The first step for creating engaged digital citizens is making sure we’re teaching young people that their contributions and opinions matter.

In February 2018, Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, was in the news worldwide when nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz entered the school with a semiautomatic rifle, killing seventeen people and injuring seventeen others.

In other school shootings, traditional news media and political leaders quickly shape the national conversation around the event.

Frustrated about viewpoints and conclusions from adults that they did not share or agree with, they used their access to social media to reset and redirect the conversation into what has now become one of the most powerful examples of youth engagement ever seen.

While young people might not be able to vote or run for office, they have a whole range of micro-activism opportunities—all made possible by their participation in the digital world.

For youth who have access to social media, micro-activism can be as simple as using their digital platforms to call awareness to issues that matter to them—eradicating racism, protecting our planet, or funding their school, and so on.

Or a seventh grader who used Change.org to successfully petition the Motion Picture Association to change the rating on a movie about school bullying so students in her junior high would be allowed to see it

Young people need to practice using tech to make a difference now, if they are going to be prepared to lead our society when they grow up.