Cyber Safety Recap – Catherine Cook – February 11, 2016

/in /by

Today we looked closely at over exposure on social media. We talked in detail about the following:

  • Over exposure is defined as putting too much of yourself out on the internet.
  • Three rules to remember related to over exposure on social media are:
    1. This is your online reputation that you put out for the world to see.
    2. What you put up stays up forever and can be spread around the world.
    3. This affects your future.
  • The things that make up and affect your online reputation are:
    • Pictures that you post.
    • Comments that you make on your own social media sites as well as those of your friends.
    • The language that you use to communicate.
    • People/friends/follower that you allow into your social network.
  • The students viewed this video which illustrates the importance of your online profile or online reputation.

Feedback

After the students viewed the video from last week, we had a discussion about how they feel when they are with a friend who is constantly looking/texting on the cell phone. The kids talked about how this makes them feel unimportant to that friend. We talked about some possible ways to handle this. Here were a couple of ideas they came up with:

  • Respectfully asking the friend to put the phone away while they are hanging out together.
  • Agreeing to everyone putting the phones away.
  • Asking their parent to collect the phones when the friend arrives. This seem to be a solution that takes some pressure off the kids.

Several students also made the comment that their parents are ‘always on their phones’ when the kids are trying to talk to them. They talked about feeling unimportant in this situation.

This was the final day of the curriculum. The students were outstanding. The biggest challenge I faced as the facilitator of the material was simply getting through the material because the students were so engaged. They generated so much discussion across all 4 sessions and this is exactly what the goal of the program is: Get the students to talk about internet safety and begin to make the connections between what they are doing online and the consequences of these actions.

As a group, we developed 3 overall rules to help guide their online actions:

  1. Nobody is who they say they are online.
  2. Pause and think for a few seconds before you post anything online.
  3. You should be able to contact, in person, anybody that you allow to friend/follow you on social networks.

I hope that you have found this information useful and have had the opportunity to ask your child about the program. I can guarantee you that they have a lot to say about social media, the internet, online predators, etc.

As always, feel free to email me directly if you would to discuss anything in detail.

Regards,

Liz