Teach Secondary 14.4

Don’t believe THE HYPE Professor Victoria Baines shares her thoughts on the vital role that teaching critical thinking skills can play in helping students confront online misinformation Professor Victoria Baines is a cybersecurity specialist, having begun her career as an intelligence analyst for Surrey Police before going on to work at the Serious Organised Crime Agency (now the NCA) and the European Police Agency. She has also worked for Facebook as its Trust & SafetyManager for EMEA, and is currently Gresham IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology at GreshamCollege. What should be the starting point for teachers when educating students about online harms? More thanmost, I’ve seen how people can fall for scams, and be persuaded and manipulated. I read classics at university, whichmay seem quite ‘elitist’ – but it taught me how to deconstruct other people’s arguments . The Romans and Greeks helped define what we now call rhetoric – the power of persuasion. We see it everywhere in the modern world – in advertising, but also in cybercrime and fake news, where rhetoric is deployed as a form of social engineering. These efforts may be carried out by hostile governments that want to affect election outcomes, for instance, or certain groups and individuals that want to change howwe think. Effective rhetoric appeals to our sense of logic, our emotions, our personal ethics, or all three at once. It governs howmanifestos are laid out. It’s at the heart of every political speech you’ve ever heard. It’s no coincidence that some of our most high profile politicians have been classicists trained in precisely that kind of rhetorical expertise. Is it now easier or harder to protect young people from online harms compared to previous decades? In over 20 years of working in online safety, one thing I’ve seen that’s quite heartening is how extraordinarily resilient kids can be – but we do have to let them actually develop that resilience in the first place. In recent discussions around online policy, and legal developments like the Online Safety Act, there’s been a drive towards removing all forms of harmful online content from children as much as possible, since their brains are still developing – and that’s absolutely right and proper. However, that shouldn’t go as far as removing all forms of risky experiences from children. When teaching a child how to ride a bike, for example, you wouldn’t demand that they never ride on the road because doing so ‘wouldn’t be safe’. If children never encounter situations where they must exercise their own judgement, weigh up risk or navigate potential conflicts, we could end up with a generation of ‘unsavvy’ adults who are ill-equipped to ever do so. One major change we’ve seen in recent years is the growing importance of influencers. When I was a teenager, the main trusted sources of information were newspapers and TV news bulletins. People are now increasingly getting news that’s mediated through a variety of influencers and personalities – some of whom may knowwhat they’re talking about, and some of whommay not. Something else that’s changed is how content is now routinely consumed. Short-formmedia can be great – at its best, it’s highly engaging – but what it can’t do is give viewers a nuanced or balanced appreciation of a given issue. 15- to 17-year- olds are perfectly capable of reaching an in-depth understanding of topics like the conflict in Gaza – but they won’t necessarily get it from short-form content. Is it possible to maintain spaces with perhaps a mild degree of risk that children can learn from, without putting themdirectly in harm’s way – like the online equivalent to a children’s playground, say, or the sports pitch? Facebook’s terms of service have always set its minimum user age as 13, and the same goes for all other US-run companies under the terms of the COPPA legislation (Child Online Protection and Privacy Act) passed by the United States Congress. However, since GDPR came into force across the EU – and in the UK, since we were prior signatories – countries have been able to set those age limits differently, should they wish. That’s led to some countries opting to set social media age limits at 16, unless younger users can obtain parental consent. Though policing that is a whole other matter. Some platforms have also experimented with running dedicated channels for children, such as YouTube Kids – but questions remain as to how the content on those channels should be monitored. Is it the responsibility of parents, or should that be down to the platformholders? “Weneedpeoplewho can critically evaluatewhat they’re being shown” 56 teachwire.net/secondary