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Digital Citizenship Week is a great time to help students think about how they interact with others, communicate, and make decisions online. These skills are valuable beyond one week in October, but it can be the perfect time to introduce these concepts to students in all grades and subject areas.
Learn how to connect digital citizenship to ELA, social studies, STEM, and other topics and use these activities to help students evaluate information, understand online behavior, and build better habits when they’re working and playing online.
Kick off a full course during Digital Citizenship Week, or pick and choose which activities your students need to learn about most. Use these lessons to help them connect online safety, media literacy, AI misinformation, and social media to the way people participate in society today.
What you teach during Digital Citizenship Week may look different depending on your students’ ages and the online situations they’re ready to discuss. In Newsela Social Studies, you can access elementary, middle, and high school course options so you can start with lessons that match your students’ questions and experiences.
This lesson from educator Kristin Montagano helps students look at two parts of digital responsibility: The trail they leave online and the way they treat others in digital spaces. They’ll read, watch, discuss, and write about digital citizenship topics like:
The lesson also sets up a clear discussion path where students can compare the benefits and drawbacks of social media, gather evidence from the resources, and write about why it’s important to be safe and responsible online.
Newsela Social Studies shared lesson
Use these resources to help your students discuss social media, digital footprints, online data, and cyberbullying.
Compelling question
How might my experiences in the digital world affect me and my peers?
| Resource | Use it for | Reading Level / Runtime | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social media is harming the minds of young people, right? Maybe not Article | Help your students compare the benefits and drawbacks of social media before discussing how young people use it. | 580L–1230L | ✓ Yes |
| Bad behavior on social media can cost recruits Article | Help your students consider how online choices can affect opportunities, reputation, and real-world relationships. | 710L–1210L | ✓ Yes |
| Start an online post, then delete it? Many websites save it anyway Article | Help your students understand digital footprints, saved data, tracking, and why “delete” does not always mean gone. | 580L–1410L | ✓ Yes |
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| Resource | Use it for | Reading Level / Runtime | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital footprints Video | Give your students a quick visual introduction to what a digital footprint is and how online activity can leave traces. | 3:14 | |
| Digital drama. Cyberbullying Video | Help your students discuss cyberbullying, online conflict, and what it means to respond with empathy and care. | 4:27 |
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Classroom support
Want a simple way for students to organize their thinking? Use the Pro/Con analysis graphic organizer as students compare the benefits and drawbacks of social media.
AI literacy is a natural topic to cover during Digital Citizenship Week because students already interact with AI-generated information, chatbot responses, and online posts that they have to decide if they’re real or AI. This unit, part of the AI Literacy Collection, helps you turn those questions and situations into reading, writing, and discussion opportunities.
Use it to help your students ask what characteristics and information AI models share, how that information spreads, and what responsibility people have when they pass along AI-generated information online.
AI Literacy Collection
Use this unit to help your students discuss misinformation, chatbots, sourcing, deepfakes, AI-generated expression, and responsible online sharing.
Essential question
What information do AI models share, and what is their impact?
| Topic or inquiry | Use it for | Sample content or task |
|---|---|---|
| Spread and Impact of Misinformation | Help your students examine how misinformation is created, how it spreads, and why it matters for society. |
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| Chatbots | Help your students evaluate why people use chatbots, when chatbot responses can be useful, and when they need closer review. |
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| AI and Sourcing | Help your students look at the strengths and limits of using AI tools during research and source evaluation. |
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| Deepfakes | Help your students understand how fake videos, images, and audio can be created and why deepfakes affect trust. |
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| Topic or inquiry | Use it for | Sample content or task |
|---|---|---|
| Creating with AI: New Forms of Expression | Help your students consider how AI is used to create content and art before they form and support an opinion. |
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| Inquiry: What responsibility does an individual have when sharing information online? | Help your students develop an evidence-supported opinion about responsibility, resharing, and the impact of information spread online. |
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Read more
Want more AI literacy lesson ideas? Explore more ways to help your students question, evaluate, and discuss AI-generated information.
This lesson helps your students decide whether school leaders can regulate their social media use, backing their claim up with evidence instead of a quick opinion. Students look at school authority, student speech, and First Amendment protections. Use it when you want Digital Citizenship Week lessons to move beyond online safety talks and into civic reasoning.
Students can compare cases, weigh evidence, and decide how much control school officials should have over student social media use on and off school grounds.
Newsela Social Studies lesson
Use these resources to help your students evaluate how far school officials’ authority should extend when student speech happens online.
Supporting question
To what extent can school officials exert control over students’ use of social media?
Performance task
Develop a claim supported by evidence about school control over social media.
| Resource | Use it for | Reading level | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Court backs discipline of Connecticut student over internet speech | Help your students examine a case where online student speech led to school discipline and discuss where school authority may have limits. | 590L–1600L | |
| Student perspectives: First Amendment rights in schools | Bring student perspectives into a discussion about free speech, school rules, and the 2021 Levy case. | 780L–1200L | |
| Supreme Court rules cheerleader’s suspension violated First Amendment | Help your students analyze how the Supreme Court weighed a student’s speech against a school’s disciplinary decision. | 610L–1370L | ✓ Yes |
| Court says student who criticized a teacher on Facebook is protected free speech | Help your students compare another off-campus social media case and decide how it should shape their evidence-based claim. | 650L–1580L |
Classroom support
Want students to organize the discussion before they write? Use the jigsaw worksheet as groups compare cases, then use the Evidence Conclusion organizer to help students build their final claim.
Use this unit to help students connect digital citizenship to bigger questions about society. It combines technology advancements into inquiries into how the internet, social media, globalization, and access shape the way we communicate and understand the world.
Newsela Social Studies unit
Use this unit to help your students examine the internet, globalization, social media, connectedness, access to technology, and misinformation.
Supporting question
What has been the impact of rapidly changing technology on American society?
| Topic | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Advent of the Internet | Help your students examine the internet’s history, its current role in society, and how connectivity may continue to shape the future. |
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| Rapid Growth of Technology | Help your students assess how fast-changing technology can transform the world while also raising questions about access and opportunity. |
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| Topic | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| American Cultural Imperialism | Help your students evaluate how culture spreads across borders and how globalization affects places, communities, and identity. |
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| Social Media and Connectedness | Help your students examine how social media connects people globally while also creating drawbacks they can discuss with text-to-self and text-to-world connections. |
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| Social Media and Misinformation | Help your students examine how misinformation spreads on social media and what people can do to slow it down. |
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When studying digital citizenship, students should also think about how people behave in groups, what “norms” we create in digital spaces, and what happens when someone breaks those norms.
Newsela’s sociology course gives you another way to make those connections through culture, social groups, and socialization. Use the full course as an elective, or pull individual units when you want your students to discuss how online communities reflect the social patterns they see offline.
Sociology elective units
Use these Newsela Social Studies units to help your students explore how people learn norms, form identities, participate in groups, and respond to social expectations.
| Unit | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Intro to Sociology | Introduce your students to sociology, major perspectives, key thinkers, and research methods they can use to study behavior and society. |
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| Culture | Help your students discuss norms, values, symbols, language, cultural diversity, pop culture, and media. |
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| Unit | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Socialization | Help your students examine how people learn social norms and roles through family, peers, media, school, and other agents of socialization. |
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| Social Structure and Social Groups | Help your students analyze status, roles, institutions, organizations, bureaucracy, and social stratification. |
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| Deviance and Social Control | Help your students discuss crime, punishment, justice, social norms, expectations, and how communities define and respond to rule-breaking. |
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Read more
Explore unit ideas, classroom activities, and resources for building a high school sociology course.
Newsela’s psychology course gives you another way to connect digital citizenship to how students think, learn, react, and make decisions. They can explore psychological theories, research methods, brain function, and mental health topics.
Use these units when you want students to look more closely at what shapes behavior online and offline. Topics like cognition, emotion, identity, and bias can help students make sense of their own choices and the choices they see others make online.
Psychology elective units
Use these Newsela Social Studies units to help your students explore how people think, learn, develop, respond emotionally, and make decisions.
| Unit | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Psychology | Introduce your students to psychology, its goals, major fields, careers, history, and research methods. |
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| Research Methods in Psychology | Help your students examine the scientific method, research ethics, bias, validity, reliability, data interpretation, and classic psychology studies. |
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| Unit | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Biological Bases of Behavior | Help your students connect brain structure, neurons, neurotransmitters, the nervous system, hormones, genetics, and behavior. |
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| Sensation and Perception | Help your students discuss how people take in information, interpret it, pay attention to it, and understand it through context. |
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| Learning and Conditioning | Help your students explore conditioning, reinforcement, punishment, observational learning, habits, and real-life applications of learning principles. |
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| Memory and Cognition | Help your students examine memory, forgetting, decision-making, problem-solving, creativity, intelligence, and cognitive biases. |
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| Unit | Use it for | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Motivation and Emotion | Help your students discuss motivation, emotion, stress, coping strategies, resilience, and emotional intelligence. |
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| Developmental Psychology | Help your students explore development, attachment, parenting influences, moral development, identity formation, and nature vs. nurture. |
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| Mental Health and Disorders | Help your students discuss mental health, disorders, risk factors, treatment, stigma, and mental health awareness. |
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Read more
Explore classroom activities, unit ideas, and resources for building a high school psychology course.
Digital citizenship lessons in ELA can support reading, writing, discussion, and media analysis. Choose from activities that ask students to examine cyberbullying and empathy or AI and academic integrity. You can also add short videos to introduce digital citizenship concepts and promote multimodal learning.
This ELA text set, created by media coordinator Stacey Olney-Whitesell, helps students recognize cyberbullying, understand empathy, and think about what it takes to build a safer online community. You can move students through vocabulary work to evidence gathering, writing, and an optional extension activity.
Newsela ELA text set
Use these articles to help your students recognize cyberbullying, examine its effects, and support their ideas with evidence.
Compelling question
How might becoming aware of the world around us, and how every person is different, affect how we treat people?
| Resource | Use it for | Reading level | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Student Opinion: Bullies need to be brought to justice | Help your students discuss accountability, fairness, and what justice can mean when bullying happens. | 560L–1000L | ✓ Yes |
| More victims of online abuse reach out to parents | Help your students consider why people may ask trusted adults for support when online abuse happens. | 740L–1280L | ✓ Yes |
| U.S. cyberbullying is rising, and girls are bearing the brunt | Help your students examine the effects of cyberbullying and discuss who may be most affected. | 600L–1310L | ✓ Yes |
| Opinion: Here’s how to actually help stop cyberbullying | Help your students identify concrete ways people can respond to cyberbullying and support a positive online community. | 460L–1010L | ✓ Yes |
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Standards alignment
Classroom support
Want students to define the key terms before they read? Use the Frayer Model for cyberbullying and empathy, then have students turn their final response into a public service announcement.
Discussing AI gives students a reason to practice argument, evidence, and counterargument. This ELA lesson asks them to read about how ChatGPT is changing cheating on school assignments and consider both the drawbacks of AI use and the possible benefits for student learning.
Newsela ELA text set
Use this lesson to help your students evaluate how AI can affect schoolwork, academic integrity, and the development of strong reading and writing skills.
Compelling question
How can artificial intelligence both help and hinder the development of strong literacy skills?
| Resource | Use it for | Student task |
|---|---|---|
| Opinion: Now that AI can write students’ essays, will everyone become a cheat? | Help your students examine claims about AI, cheating, proposed solutions, and possible benefits for learning. |
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| How to write a persuasive speech | Support the extension when students choose to argue whether AI is harmful or beneficial through a persuasive speech. | Use this as a writing support if students turn their opinion into a speech. |
| How to write an argumentative essay | Support the extension when students choose to write an argument about whether AI is harmful or beneficial. | Use this as a writing support if students turn their opinion into an argumentative essay. |
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Classroom support
Want students to extend the discussion into writing? You can have them write either a persuasive speech or an argumentative essay supporting their opinion on whether AI is harmful or beneficial for students.
Videos can give students a quick way into digital citizenship before they move into longer reading, writing, or discussion tasks. This ELA collection includes short explainers on online data, digital footprints, media literacy, and online safety.
Newsela ELA videos
Use this video collection to introduce online data, digital footprints, media literacy, deepfakes, fallacies, propaganda, online safety, and trust.
| Video | Runtime |
|---|---|
| What are the features of a newspaper? | 0:56 |
| What is the Internet? | 0:58 |
| Developing skills through storytelling | 2:09 |
| Interpreting diverse media | 2:11 |
| Propaganda today | 2:16 |
| Propaganda | 2:33 |
| Online safety | 3:02 |
| Universities warn of using ChatGPT | 3:13 |
| Digital footprints | 3:14 |
| Video | Runtime |
|---|---|
| Can you outsmart the fallacy that started a witch hunt? | 4:06 |
| Impact of mass media on our lives | 4:26 |
| Digital drama. Cyberbullying | 4:27 |
| How to choose your news | 4:47 |
| Can you outsmart the apples and oranges fallacy? | 5:27 |
| Protecting your online data | 5:56 |
| Creating fake videos of real people | 7:15 |
| How your online data is used | 7:21 |
| Can you outsmart the slippery slope fallacy? | 7:43 |
| Video | Runtime |
|---|---|
| History of media literacy, part 1 | 9:13 |
| The dark(er) side of media | 9:58 |
| Introduction to media literacy | 10:05 |
| Media skills | 10:25 |
| Who can you trust? | 12:02 |
Want the full collection in one place? Open the Newsela ELA video collection to choose the clips that best fit your Digital Citizenship Week lesson.
Open the video collectionUse STEM resources to connect digital citizenship to the technology students use every day. These activities help them see the science and careers behind digital tools, not just the online behaviors around them.
Use this digital technology unit to help students see digital citizenship through a STEM career lens. Instead of only asking how people use technology responsibly, students examine the systems and careers behind the tools, like AI, cybersecurity, software, and web design.
This unit works well when you want students to connect everyday digital experiences to people who build, secure, and improve digital tools.
Newsela STEM unit
Use this unit to help your students explore how AI, data, cybersecurity, software, autonomous vehicles, and web tools shape the digital world they use every day.
| Career focus | What students explore | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) | Help your students learn how algorithms drive AI and consider future uses, job-market effects, and the societal impact of this technology. |
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| Information Technology (IT) | Help your students investigate how data engineers collect and interpret online data, including how digital activity can shape personalized experiences. |
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| Network Systems and Cybersecurity | Help your students examine why secure networks matter and how people with different backgrounds and skills contribute to cybersecurity. |
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Scroll left to right to see the full table.
| Career focus | What students explore | Sample content |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Help your students understand how software engineers use code, algorithms, testing, creativity, and problem-solving to make computers work. |
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| Unmanned Vehicle Technology | Help your students explore autonomous vehicle technology and consider how self-driving designs could be improved for different users. |
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| Web and Cloud | Help your students investigate how web developers and digital designers make online information accessible and usable. |
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
You can use Generation Genius science videos to connect digital citizenship to the science behind communication. Students can start with how people take in and process information, then move into how information travels over distance and how digital and analog signals work.
This gives you a simple STEM bridge for Digital Citizenship Week. Students aren’t just talking about what they do online, but are also learning how information moves through systems, devices, and signals.
Generation Genius science videos
Use these STEM videos to help your students connect digital tools to senses, information transfer, communication over distance, and signal systems.
| Video | Use it for | Grade band | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Five Senses | Help younger students connect information and observation to the way people take in the world around them. | K–2 | 10:20 |
| Communication Over Distances | Introduce how people send and receive messages across distances before connecting that idea to digital communication. | K–2 | 10:25 |
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
| Video | Use it for | Grade band | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brain Processing of Senses | Help students discuss how the brain processes information before they connect that idea to digital messages and media. | 3–5 | 12:23 |
| Information Transfer | Help students examine how information moves from one place or person to another. | 3–5 | 12:24 |
| Digital vs. Analog Signals | Connect digital citizenship to the signal systems behind phones, computers, and communication technology. | 6–8 | 14:09 |
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Want the full science video collection? Open the Generation Genius collection to choose the videos that best fit your Digital Citizenship Week lesson.
Open the science videosDigital Citizenship Week is a way to kick off these lessons and conversations, but they hit home best when they show up throughout the year. With the Newsela Learning Suite, you can return to digital citizenship whenever students are reading about online behavior, evaluating media, discussing AI, or thinking about how technology affects their lives.
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