Digital Literacy tips for families at Care.com

I always enjoy reading Meg St-Esprit's work, and contributing is an honor! Here she lays out an excellent roadmap for the different ways to approach Digital Literacy.

Digital Literacy tips for families at Care.com
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I always enjoy reading Meg St-Esprit's work, and contributing is an honor! Here she lays out an excellent roadmap for the different ways to approach Digital Literacy.

Here's a sample:

“Digital literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, organize, create and communicate information,” defines Jenkins. She adds that many young children will only focus on the first three skills before learning to create and communicate online as teens, but the early skills lay the foundation for more advanced tasks.

Jenkins spends hours watching and reviewing YouTube videos so that parents don’t have to, and says there is so much good to be found on the internet — but that good is best accessed by kids with strong digital literacy skills. “Ultimately, the internet is a mystery,” she explains. “It’s easy to fall into complacency, which puts users of any age at risk.”

Hope you enjoy!

Critical digital literacy tips for kids: How to teach the basics
Digital literacy is essential for kids, whether they use the internet at home or at school. Here's how to start teaching these vital skills.
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by Meg St-Esprit<br>
Published on: July 28, 202511 min read<br>
Critical digital literacy tips for kids: How to teach the basics<br>
Today’s parents are the first generation of adults to raise children in a fully digital world — while many parents remember the first time they had a chance to surf the web, their own kids have been asking Alexa to play a song since birth. To add to the stress of parenting digital natives, parents receive conflicting advice about screens and technology everywhere they turn.</p>
<p>From knowing the risks associated with social media to setting screen time boundaries with caregivers, the laundry list of tech concerns parents need to stay on top of can feel overwhelming. It doesn’t have to, though. Parents and caregivers can help kids develop digital literacy skills from a young age and set them up for a lifetime of safety online.</p>
<p>“Digital literacy is a lifelong process,” says Cindy Marie Jenkins, creative director of Outthink Media, an organization that gives parents information about popular YouTube channels so they can make informed decisions. Kids are not born with the ability to spot a deepfake, tell the difference between a credible source and a conspiracy theory or avoid internet predators. Those skills are taught over years of parenting. Here’s how parents can focus on the core skills of digital literacy and set kids up for success in the digital age." class="wp-image-8405"></figure></p>
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<p>Read more from me and media expert <strong>Author Devorah Heitner</strong> <a href=

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