Google Is Teaching Children How To Act Online. Is It the Best Role Model?

Google is positioning itself in schools as a trusted authority on digital citizenship at a moment when the company's data-handling practices are under growing scrutiny. From a report: Google is on a mission to teach children how to be safe online. That is the message behind 'Be Internet Awesome,' a so-called digital-citizenship education program that the technology giant developed for schools. The lessons include a cartoon game branded with Google's logo and blue, red, yellow and green color palette. The game is meant to help students from third grade through sixth guard against schemers, hackers and other bad actors. Google plans to reach five million schoolchildren with the program this year and has teamed up with the National Parent Teacher Association to offer related workshops to parents. But critics say the company's recent woes -- including revelations that it was developing a censored version of its search engine for the Chinese market and had tracked the whereabouts of users who had explicitly turned off their location history -- should disqualify Google from promoting itself in schools as a model of proper digital conduct.

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