Younger Canadians in a Wireless Planet (YCWW) is Canada’s longest-running and most complete research study on young people’s attitudes, behaviours, and viewpoints regarding the online, technological know-how, and digital media. MediaSmarts has surveyed over 20,000 moms and dads, academics, and students by way of this review since 1999.  

The findings from YCWW are utilised to set benchmarks for investigate on children’s use of the world wide web, technologies, and electronic media and have knowledgeable coverage on the digital economic climate, privacy, on the net safety, on-line harms and electronic effectively-getting, digital citizenship, and electronic media literacy, among other topics. This study is also used to inform other jobs at MediaSmarts and at other businesses, including academic institutions, inside of our huge and growing community of research partners.  

The research is at this time in its fourth phase. In 2019, MediaSmarts’ study group executed concentration groups to get a kid’s-eye-perspective of what is functioning for younger people today on the web and what demands to be changed or improved so that they get the most out of their on the web encounters. Aim teams with mothers and fathers helped to round out conversations about what is essential to foster collective on the net resiliency. This qualitative do the job assisted us get ready for a quantitative study that began in 2021.  

We made two surveys to explore the attitudes, functions, gains, and troubles young folks keep and expertise when they are on the net and employing digital devices – one for college students in grades 4 to 6 and a single for grades 7 to 11. We administered these surveys to 1,058 youth from throughout Canada in between September and December of 2021. For far more comprehensive facts about our exploration approaches, be sure to read through this report.

This sixth report – Digital Media Literacy and Electronic Citizenship – offers conclusions similar to digital media literacy and electronic citizenship. We share findings associated to verifying info on line, finding out electronic media literacy techniques, and moral digital citizenship. Facts gathered in Section IV of YCWW aids us improved have an understanding of how younger Canadians determine the trustworthiness of the resources they come across on line and whether or not they realize the advantage of some verification tactics more than other individuals. This report also incorporates a temporary case review on whether youth fully grasp the company design and common operation of search engines like Google. We communicate to the electronic media literacy skills young Canadians are studying, from whom, and what expertise they are interested in studying much more about. Knowing extra about how youth navigate and take part in on the internet spaces provides us some perception into their ability to actively and positively take part in on the net communities as electronic citizens. This report also solidifies the require for a national strategy to prioritize electronic media literacy education and learning in school rooms and communities across Canada.

The infographic underneath summarizes the important findings from the YCWW Phase IV Electronic Media Literacy and Electronic Citizenship report.