Chair Salaam questions both panelists on reaching younger children online

One of the things that I've been seeing as well, I mean, I have 10 children, myself, the youngest is 10,

is that oftentimes as parents or as educators and loved ones, we may be, and this is really for both of you, we may be engaged in activities like cooking or cleaning or something of that nature.

And oftentimes our children might be on those digital spaces and digital, you know, doing things like on YouTube or whatever.

And I'm just wondering what that experience has been because, of course, we know that seventh grade is really great, but we've been seeing trends that are going even further down.

Meaning attacking younger and younger individuals in order to try to make them into a group of people that actually hate, you know, because hate is taught.

And so I'm just wondering what...

both of your experiences have been as it relates to really pulling in this conversation towards younger individuals.

Yeah, we're definitely seeing a greater need, like you said, for starting even younger than we currently do.

And it's something that, again, our education team is working on developing because we have to modify the workshops that we provide based on the age group.

What works for a seventh grader or a fifth grader is not necessarily going to work for a second or third grader.

So we have to make the curriculum and the topics that we're discussing equally as impactful and effective, but also understandable for the age that they're at.

And part of that is learning and adapting how we deliver that through digital literacy.

You know, we're not trying to promote increased usage of social media platforms or increase their time online even more than it already is because that's already growing.

But it's how to include what platforms they're already on or what they're being introduced to and making that the forefront and helping them recognize,

again, what's hate speech online, helping them be upstanders rather than bystanders in those efforts.

Thank you for your question, Council Member.

It's of course important for parents to have honest conversations with their children about different manifestations of hate and speaking specifically about hatred against Jews, about anti-Semitism.

It's such a nuanced form of hate because of its history.

And there are different manifestations of anti-Semitism.

Understanding Jewish peoplehood and Jewish history, Jewish American history, is of course an important part of being able to understand and then counter and prevent anti-Semitism.

Another aspect, however, is also the

the social media space as you spoke of.

Parents, I'm sure, would love to be able to prohibit as much of their children's time on social media as possible.

That's not always the reality, and we need to be able to hold social media and tech companies accountable for the hate that

permeates across their platforms.