Facebook this morning revealed a new set of educational resources aiming to help young people to educate the most out of digital technology. The Facebook Digital Literacy Library program as the new initiative is named focuses to educate children aged from 11 to 18. It covers a vast topic like privacy, reputation, security, identity exploration, safety, and more to bring about awareness and change among the young youths.
Facebook in partnership Youth and Media team at the Berkman Klein Center made the lesson plan at Harvard University for the Facebook Digital Literacy Library program, which makes ready-to-use lessons from Berkman Klein available globally and free-of-charge under a Creative Commons license.
The lessons available are based on over 10 years of academic research by the Youth and the Media team, especially for the children.
Facebook global head of safety Antigone Davis and global safety programs manager Karuna Nain said: “Lessons made available to youths reflect the voices of young people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, geographies and educational levels.” The lesson also covers thematic areas such as privacy and reputation, identity exploration, security, safety and wellbeing and more to bring awareness among them.
Facebook Digital Literacy Library will be currently available in English covering 18 lessons in total. It hopes to bring 45 other languages soon which are free to download via Facebook’s Safety Center and Berkman Klein’s Digital Literacy Resource Platform.
The recent launch of Youth Portal also provides educational material to the teens. These resources are mostly focused on Facebook itself, providing guidance on things like how to navigate the service, how to stay secure and to understand how people’s data is used.
Additionally, Facebook has been guiding children under 13 by rolling out educational guidance into its messenger kid’s apps. The app guides children to be much more humanitarian by promoting empathy and positive messages through things like the “Messenger Kids Pledge,” kindness stickers, and other in-app challenges.
It is a good, useful, and appreciable initiative taken by Facebook for the global well being and betterment of the youths. A literacy program like such will hopefully help the next generation of users.
