Narrative Scripts Embedded in Social Media Towards Empowering Digital and Self-protection Skills

Social media has become an important part of adolescents’ lives, with an increasing number of teenagers spending a great part of their time creating, sharing, and socializing with online content. Although the popularity of social media keeps growing, different studies identified threats and dangers that exist in such networks. From harmful content to negative behaviors, users can fall victim to negative social media phenomena that can affect their mental health and wellbeing. Several media literacy initiatives have been designed to promote social media awareness amongst the youth using traditional approaches to teaching about social media risks and threats. However, these approaches are limited in enabling deep reflection about the dangers behind their social media interactions and empowering their empathy, perspective-taking, critical thinking, digital and self-protection skills. This demo paper introduces a perspective in this context proposing the integration of educational opportunities within social media. The proposed approach is designed as a social media simulated learning platform where embedded learning activities follow a novel “narrative scripting” approach, in which Computer Supported Collaborative Learning script mechanisms are combined with counter-narratives strategies.