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Library Freedom Project Memes for Privacy-Oriented Teens

Timeline and workplan

• January - February 2021: We’ll connect with teens and begin brainstorming content. We’ll seek feedback on what privacy topics are of greatest interest and which platforms are best for dissemination. We anticipate mostly using LFP-managed TikTok and Instagram accounts for sharing, and we’ll have backups on the libraryfreedom.org website. This stage will also help us identify which teens we want to work with for the rest of the project.

• March - April 2021: We’ll pilot our first resources (~10) on LFP’s social media, as well as the social media of our member libraries and of the teens involved in this project, and will monitor how well each resource performs. We’ll also have identified those teens who are most enthusiastic about the work and will invite them to be on our TAB for the rest of the project. We’ll have 1-3 teens from the TAB creating each individual resource, and our full TAB of 20-30 teens giving high level feedback and reviewing each resource before it goes live.

• May - August 2021: Resource creation, dissemination, and evaluation: The rest of the project period will consist of LFP working with our TAB to create, disseminate, and evaluate resources. We will create 30-50 resources and memes, some with more in-depth information, some more simple, but all about practical privacy.

Original Calyx Proposal

Library Freedom Project (LFP) is a privacy-focused community of practice for librarians. LFP is a leader in the library world, with nearly 100 Privacy Advocates representing everywhere from the largest urban public libraries to rural communities. Librarians are key to the anti-surveillance fight because of our privacy values and the relationships we have to a diverse public. Libraries are some of the only places with free computer help, and for years LFP has provided resources on bringing digital privacy into tech programs. LFP’s community of librarians proposes to work with our teen patrons to create high-quality privacy resources for young people focused on their unique needs. It is all too common to hear the refrain “teenagers don’t care about privacy,” as adults point to teens' use of social media and attitudes about online sharing. But as librarians who know the teens in our communities, we know that this saying is a myth. Teens recognize privacy to be about personal agency and "their ability to control a social situation, how information flows, and when and where they can be observed by others.” 3 Teens regularly make decisions that obfuscate information from certain parties, like principals or parents, and use anti-surveillance strategies such as anonymous accounts or “finstas.” But there remains a need for a robust set of privacy resources made just for teens, on topics they care about, using language and formats they understand. We will build this shareable set of resources with our teen patrons. Over eight months beginning January 2021, we’ll work with teens from our libraries to create a set of privacy resources for people ages 13-19, prioritizing the needs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQ teens.

Our work plan is as follows:

• Planning (2 mos): We’ll connect with teens and begin brainstorming content. We’ll seek feedback on what privacy topics are of greatest interest and which platforms are best for dissemination. We anticipate mostly using LFP-managed TikTok and Instagram accounts for sharing, and we’ll have backups on the libraryfreedom.org website. This stage will also help us identify which teens we want to work with for the rest of the project.
• Pilot resources and Teen Advisory Board (TAB) (2 mos): We’ll pilot our first resources (~10) on LFP’s social media, as well as the social media of our member libraries and of the teens involved in this project, and will monitor how well each resource performs. We’ll also have identified those teens who are most enthusiastic about the work and will invite them to be on our TAB for the rest of the project. We’ll have 1-3 teens from the TAB creating each individual resource, and our full TAB of 20-30 teens giving high level feedback and reviewing each resource before it goes live.
• Resource creation, dissemination, and evaluation (4 mos): The rest of the project period will consist of LFP working with our TAB to create, disseminate, and evaluate resources. We will create 30-50 resources and memes, some with more in-depth information, some more simple, but all about practical privacy.

We request $5500 support for this project. The funds primarily pay labor costs for our LFP librarians and TAB with pre paid gift cards. We’ll also use some funds to work with our graphic designer on design elements for a unified look and feel, and to help us communicate about new surveillance norms that we are likely to experience in 2021. While we are uncertain at this stage what the precise cost breakdown will be, we believe that amount will allow us to pay participants fairly, with one librarian leading on each resource (receiving a $75 honorarium per resource) and 1-3 teens consulting per resource (receiving a $25 gift card per consultation). Furthermore, many teens are required to complete volunteer hours with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit like LFP, so we expect to reach the higher end of our goal of 30-50 resources by offering our teens either gift cards or volunteer hours. Finally, we’ll seek parent/guardian permission for all teens, and we’ll encourage anonymous participation, eg obscuring faces in video resources. At the end of our project, we’ll have created 30-50 shareable resources covering a variety of privacy topics that are not only relevant and useful to teens, but using their direct input. We’ll determine the final set of topics with our TAB, but with feedback from teens, we’ve created an initial list of topics:

• Protest security 101 for teens, eg “it’s your first protest; how to do it safely”
• Additional protestor security topics, eg “what’s the deal with burner phones?”
• School surveillance issues and some tips for fighting back
• Debunking common security/privacy myths
• Privacy rights 101 for marginalized teens, including undocumented teens

This project finds itself at the rare intersection of necessary and fun; our teen patrons gave us great feedback on this proposal, and they are enthusiastic and ready to start. We are excited to share this proposal with Calyx Institute and deeply grateful for your consideration.