Ask students if they have ever done a similar exercise, in class or elsewhere. If so, ask them to reflect on what has changed since the last time they did.
Now, write, project, or have students access the quote in the student material (found in Communicating Online) from a teenage girl (from the 2012 MediaSmarts study Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Talking to Parents and Youth About Life Online):
I think online it’s easier to say [mean] things, because you’re not face-to-face and you’re hiding behind a screen.
Ask students:
- Do you agree with this quote? Why or why not?
- When someone says something to you online that hurts your feelings, how is it different from when it happens offline? (If you know them offline, you may be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt if they do or say something that makes you upset; people you only know online may seem less like “real” people and more like video game characters; also, if you’re unsure whether they meant to hurt your feelings or not you can talk to them in person instead of online.)
- Have you ever been unsure whether something that someone said or did to you online was meant to be mean or not?
- If so, what did you do about it? (More than a third of Canadian students say they would react to mean online behaviour by talking to the person offline.)
- Have you ever accidentally said something online that offended someone? Have you made a comment meaning to be funny, and had it backfire?
Have students access the Talking to People Online and Offline discussion activity. Ask students how talking to people online (through things like video games, social networks, texting and instant messaging) is different from talking to people face-to-face. Make sure to include the following points:
| OFFLINE | ONLINE |
| We can see them We can hear them/ their tone of voice They can see you They can hear you Things you say disappear (except in memory)/Only people who are there hear you We can see how people react to what we say |
We can’t see them We can’t hear them/their tone of voice They can’t see you They can’t hear you Everything you say can be read later People can read what you say We don’t see how people react to what we say |
Next, tell students that more than half of Canadian students who have been mean online say they did it because they were just joking. Ask students how the aspects of online communication above can make it hard to tell if someone is just joking, or hard to tell if a joke you’ve made has gone too far and really hurt someone. Can they think of a time (online or offline) when someone said or did something to them that hurt more than it was meant to? (This last question is meant for personal reflection; don’t require students to answer unless they volunteer to.) Divide the class into small groups and ask students to think about these aspects of communicating using digital technology like the Internet and then make a list of strategies to address the negative side of online communication, found in the Communicating with Digital Technology in the student material. In particular, make sure they consider:
- How can you reduce the chances of hurting someone’s feelings online?
- How can you tell if you’ve hurt someone’s feelings without meaning to?
- How can you make things better if you’ve hurt someone’s feelings without meaning to?
- How should you react if someone hurts your feelings online?
Have the groups share their strategies with the class and make a “master list” on the board. Now ask students whether they think people are more or less likely to speak out when they witness bullying if it’s online or offline. What are some ways that the aspects of online communication discussed above might make it harder to speak out against bullying, or make it easier for you to do nothing or even join in? Make sure the following points come up:
- Because you can’t see or hear people, it can be hard to tell if a situation is serious, especially in environments like games where a certain amount of “trash talk” is normal: more than half of all Canadian students don’t speak out about racism or sexism online because they say “people are just joking around.”
- Because people can’t see us, it’s easier to pretend we don’t see what’s going on and to just leave the situation.
- Because online communications may be recorded and shared, we don’t know who and how many people will see anything we do – so speaking out may feel more risky.
- Because we can’t see all the other people who are witnessing it, we don’t know whether they feel the same way as we do about it. If nobody else is doing anything, that may make us feel like it can’t be that serious.