This NYT article is great: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/instagram.html
I read the first few paragraphs with 6th graders, and they were really engaged by the interactivity of the actual Instagram posts linked into the story. "Like it!" They made me 'like' each one of the photos of Thanksgiving dishes and delights. It gave them a thrill that they interacted directly with the person the NYT featured.
I then showed them Socality Barbie, which is my favorite Instagram account.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/hipster-socality-barbie-shows-the-cliche-of-instagram-authenticity/404431/
Socality Barbie's metaphor is clear enough even for tweens to understand. On a side note, it's a great opportunity for 6th graders to unpack the harmful stories the toy industry capitalizes off of with dolls like Barbie, Nerf gatling guns, etc.
I created this infographic to establish the less desirable dynamics that kids encounter as they step into online social spaces for the first time:
The infographic led into discussions about gamer culture, which I'll get into tomorrow.
Some students said in rebuttal of our discussion of (6th grade appropriate) examples of hazing that trust is an issue in gaming environments.
We talked about trust. Trust is earned. Is hazing an ordeal that earns someone trust, or does it go too far and enforce loyalty, instead?
One student shared an experience of being threatened in an online game. The anonymous player threatened to hack this student's account, and suddenly began sending text to an unrelated personal device belonging to the student. Scary!
From here, we're going to talk about how to welcome those outliers into the crowd of kindness, as well as how to move oneself away from the fringe and make kinder choices in online communication. One great example of people doing this work is found here:
https://blog.dosomething.org/happiness-hackathon/
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