› Grades 6–8 · ages 11–14 · Philosophical chairs
Should apps learn about you from your friends?
“Apps should be allowed to use who your friends are to suggest, sort, or guess things about you.”
Philosophical chairs on social graphs: apps that suggest friends, guess things about you from your connections, and catch fake accounts by the company they keep. Three real cases, a seat-switching debate, and one rule each pair writes for how apps may use who you know.
50 minutes · one class period · free to photocopy
Students will be able to
- Explain what a social graph is and name two things apps use it for.
- Argue whether an app may learn about you from your friends, citing a case, and switch sides when persuaded.
- Write one rule for how apps use connections and say what it costs.
Vocabulary
- Graph (nodes and edges) — Dots and lines: things, and how they’re connected.
- Social graph — The map of who knows whom — and what an app can guess from it.
- Community detection — Finding the clusters in a network — friend groups, fan bases, bubbles.
- PageRank / centrality — Important = pointed at by important things.
- Privacy (when using AI) — What you paste into a model may be stored, logged, or used to improve products.
- Consent (data use) — Whether people agreed to their data being used to train or fine-tune systems.
Agenda · 50 minutes
| Minutes | Segment | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0–6 | Warm-up | Draw a private mini social graph. What could an app guess from it? |
| 6–14 | Cases + vocabulary | Read the three cases (people you may know, guessing from friends, catching fake accounts) and the vocabulary cards. Each student writes one claim. |
| 14–38 | Philosophical chairs | Agree / Disagree lines, plus an Undecided row for 'only with an off switch.' Restate the last speaker before answering. Switch seats any time and say what moved you. Teacher tallies switches. |
| 38–45 | Write a rule | Pairs write one rule apps must follow when they use your friends, and what that rule costs (worse suggestions, more fake accounts, more work). |
| 45–50 | Exit ticket | Handout. Share the switch tally and two of the rules. |
Agree — connections make apps useful and safer
Using who you know helps you find friends, see things you'll like, and keeps fake accounts out.
- Fake accounts stick together, so the graph is how you catch them.
- Suggesting people I actually know saves me time.
- If my friends like something, I might too. That's how good suggestions work.
Disagree — my friends aren't my permission
An app shouldn't learn things about me from other people's choices.
- My friend uploaded their contacts. I never agreed to that.
- Guessing my age or school from my friends is still learning about me without asking.
- Being in a group with someone doesn't make me like them.
Discussion questions
- 1.openingWhat's one thing an app could guess about you just from who your friends are?
- 2.coreIs a guess about you private information, even if it's only a guess?
- 3.coreYour friend uploads their contacts and your number is in it. Whose information is that?
- 4.coreIs catching fake accounts worth letting apps study everyone's connections?
- 5.closingWrite one rule apps must follow when they use your friends. What does it cost?
How philosophical chairs runs
Chairs face each other in two lines — Agree and Disagree — with a short Undecided row at the end. A speaker from one side speaks; the other side must summarize what was said before responding. Anyone may switch seats at any time, and switching is praised, never mocked.
In grades 6–8
Evidence enters the room. Students can hold a position they don't believe, and that's the point.
Preview the full pack
Cover, teacher guide, and every student handout. Print teacher pages once and student pages one per learner.
On a phone, open the PDF in a new tab — in-page previews are unreliable in mobile Safari.
Standards
- CCSS ELA SL.7.1 / SL.8.1
- CCSS ELA SL.7.3 / SL.8.3 (evaluate reasoning and evidence)
- CSTA 2-IC-23 (tradeoffs between public and private information)
- C3 Framework D2.Civ.10 (rights and responsibilities)
More for grades 6–8
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