You have learned about young people's rights online and about who is meant to protect them, including the platforms.
This lesson is about the companies that build the apps and sites you use.
- Look at the design choices they make and the rules they have to follow.
- Decide whether common features mainly help you or work against you.
- Work out how reporting harm is supposed to work when something goes wrong.
Every feature on the apps you use is a choice someone made. That includes the next clip starting by itself, notifications, infinite scroll (a feed that never ends) and targeted ads (ads picked for you using information about you).
Digital technology companies have three jobs at once:
- Design: they decide how the app works and what it nudges you to do.
- Regulation: they must follow rules. In Ireland, the government makes rules about online safety and about how your personal data is used, and checks that companies keep them.
- Safety reporting: they must let you report harm and then act on it.
Think of one feature you notice every day.
Each card below describes a real effect of a common feature. No card tells you which box it belongs in, so you have to decide and be ready to explain why.
- Find the card about the next video starting by itself. Talk it over with a partner and decide whether it mainly benefits the user or can mainly work against the user.
- Before the card goes in a box, someone finishes this sentence out loud: "It goes here because…" If you can, say who benefits: the user, the company, or both.
- Then you will play Class Play, a game where everyone answers on their own device. You sort all six cards, starting with the one you just did together.
Design features: help or hinder?
Your teacher will put a game code on the board: type it in on your device to join. Now everyone sorts all six cards on their own device, starting with the card you just did together.
- Each card describes one effect, so each card has one box that fits it best.
- You can change your answer until the time is up.
- You also choose how sure you are: just checking, fairly sure or certain. The surer you say you are, the more points you win if you are right, and the more you lose if you are wrong.
- Your answers count towards your team's score, and the game puts you in a team at random.
When the round closes, the board shows how the class split and the right box, and your teacher asks why.
Class Play
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