Meta has partnered with the nonprofit organization Childhelp to create a curriculum that will teach middle schoolers how to recognize forms of online exploitation, such as sextortion scams and grooming. The curriculum was “fully funded” by Meta and is free for any school, parent, or organization to access.
Meta says the curriculum consists of lesson plans, interactive classroom activities, and videos to help kids “navigate both the online and offline world safely.” It was developed with child safety experts from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Department of Homeland Security, the nonprofit organization Thorn, Purdue University, and the Crimes against Children Research Center.
Childhelp is an organization that assists neglected and abused children. It also aims to increase awareness about child abuse.
Meta has ramped up efforts to make its platforms safer for kids as lawmakers focus on child safety. Last year, Instagram started putting all teens into more private and restricted accounts and began automatically blurring nude images sent to minors. The platform also introduced new features to fight sextortion scams, including preventing users from screenshotting disappearing photos in private chats.
At the same time, bills like the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0 have made their way through the Senate, while the recently introduced Kids Off Social Media Act aims to prevent kids under the age of 13 from creating social media accounts. Some states have passed social media safety laws of their own, though most of them are facing legal challenges.
“At Meta, we continue to do all we can to protect young people on our apps,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s global safety head, said in the press release. “Those protections will be even more effective if teens also feel confident in spotting potential harms and know where to go for help.”
