The use of the media and the internet is increasingly increasing the number of advertisements shown to users, which wastes a significant amount of their time on the internet. They also create a kind of dependency that reduces their resistance to advertising, or use other tricks (such as in-app purchases or loot boxes) in ‘free’ games to extract money from them. Children should not have access to their parents’ credit card details because they are often lured into making similar purchases. Every purchase should be passed for parental review so that they can explain to children and teenagers how money should be handled. Make minors aware of the scams that advertising and online payments can hide and try out exercises with them to strengthen their critical thinking. Critical thinking in minors is most developed by discussing an incident that happened to them or someone they know. Always consider that “there is no way we can be deceived!”. But this is wrong, it is a common sense trap to assume that we ourselves possess critical thinking and everyone else does not. It also reveals a lack of empathy, something that predators and bullies have particularly low: “If he’s so weak or stupid, good for him.” We see here how our low emotional intelligence reduces our critical thinking. The same can happen with high emotional intelligence which will “cloud” our reasoning ability. The news is full of incidents of people being “screwed”. We can collect these incidents from newspapers and electronic news, and open a dialogue with children. Another way is to show them advertisements and invite them to identify communication tricks and hidden messages. Both adults and children do not learn unless they have a specific experience in mind (experiential precedent) or have already been personally involved in an issue. So you will find, as educators, that people who have already been exposed to bullying will pay more attention to you if you open a similar topic. The other kids don’t recognize emotions in those words and will pass it by or make fun of each other. This is why you should seize the opportunity from the news (school or in the news) and open a dialogue. So let’s start our day with a selected incident, e.g. about the new trend of turning photos into nudes or fan violence. The instructor who will take on this particular introduction should be full of emotions about the event, e.g. anger or sadness, as if he/she were in the position of the victim. Children have an innate sense to appreciate and bond with teachers who have feelings and are pure (without malice). You can also ask to be taught by children or adults who have more experience. We negatively target internet addicts or aggressive kids, but if you give them a reason to share their experiences with the class or solutions to the problem at hand, there will be more resonance with other students and better results.
But this only happens in groups where they do not feel accused (blameless culture). And jokes between students, to a certain extent, are a way for them to assimilate new and perhaps conflicting information (dissonance reduction).
