This unit examines how privacy, identity, and verification practices interact with platform harms, youth safety, and emerging AI threats. Students evaluate technical, legal, and governance approaches (encryption, pseudonyms, verification, moderation, and Section 230 reforms) and prepare policy and practice solutions that protect mental health and authentic civic discourse while enabling accountability. It builds on foundational civic and digital literacy from Unit 1 and prepares learners to design restoration-networking and policy interventions in subsequent units.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze federal and state privacy laws, encryption principles, and anonymity/verification trade-offs by comparing at least three real-world platform policies and assessing their likely impacts on minors’ safety and privacy
- Evaluate different user-identification and pseudonym systems (centralized verification, third-party verifiers, self-sovereign identity) and recommend governance roles for public agencies, platforms, and civil society using criteria for accountability, equity, and feasibility
- Apply threat-mapping techniques to identify platform harms (bots, trolls, AI misuse, targeted advertising) affecting teens and design at least three immediate mitigation strategies for individuals, parents, and schools
- Demonstrate policy-advocacy skills by producing a concise reform brief (including a six-point action plan and measured Section 230 modifications or AI roadmap elements) and an outreach plan to advance restoration-networking solutions for healthier online discourse
Curriculum
- 1 Section
- 27 Lessons
- 30 hours
Expand all sectionsCollapse all sections
- Unit 2 — Privacy, Identity, and Platform Safety27
- 1.1Laws Protecting Privacy20 mins
- 1.2Privacy’s Stronghold: Encryption20 mins
- 1.3Pitfalls of Anonymous Platforms20 mins
- 1.4Time for User ID Verification?20 mins
- 1.5Big Tech Gets Verification Wrong20 mins
- 1.6Reality Check—Our Data Abounds20 mins
- 1.7Putting What’s Known to Good Use20 mins
- 1.8Who Does the Verifying?20 mins
- 1.9Pseudonyms to the Rescue20 mins
- 1.10Long Live Privacy; RIP Anonymity20 mins
- 1.11Some Benefits of Social Media for Teens20 mins
- 1.12Social Media’s Harms to Kids and Teens20 mins
- 1.13Meta’s Purposeful Disregard20 mins
- 1.14It’s Not Just Meta20 mins
- 1.15Band-Aids on Gaping Wounds20 mins
- 1.16Restoration Networking Solutions to Protect Kids and Teens20 mins
- 1.17How Parents Can Protect Their Kids Right Now20 mins
- 1.18How to Protect Your Mental Health on Social Media Right Now20 mins
- 1.19AIIs Not New, But It Has Crossed the Rubicon20 mins
- 1.20AI Know-It-All: Friend or Creep?20 mins
- 1.21The AI Roadmap for Restoration Networks20 mins
- 1.22What Exactly Are Bots and Trolls?20 mins
- 1.23Restoration Networking Solutions on the Way20 mins
- 1.24Tips for Defanging: What You Can Do Right Now20 mins
- 1.25The Six-Point Action Plan for Authentic Civil Discourse20 mins
- 1.26Supporting Section 230 with Careful Reforms20 mins
- 1.27The Checkered History of Fact-Checking20 mins
Instructor
Free
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