How to protect your students from Internet dangers
Knowing the universal nature of the Internet, it is crucial that you also know how to protect your students online. With the evolving technology and increasing lack of cyber-etiquette, more people online are becoming rude or are taking advantage of others. Since they are hidden behind the anonymity of a code name, they create online personas and take the freedom of speech and expression to unimaginable heights.
Silicon Valley technology forecaster Paul Saffo once said that the information superhighway has become “cyburbia’s” mean streets, and that it is steadily getting worse. Incidents like a female technology blogger going into hiding due to sexually explicit death threats online have been fodder for debates and forums.
Majority of Internet users are civil and trustworthy to some extent. But there are always people who are mentally imbalanced, fanatics, or are simply perverse.
Thus, when it comes to high school students, it is not enough that you only teach them how to use the Internet. They should also be guided on how to use and filter the data on the Internet.
Here are some tips how:
Involve the parents
- Discuss with parents how they can help you make their children understand the security risks. For those with Internet connection in their homes, or with kids regularly visiting Internet cafes, it is important to reduce the threats.
- If they have a computer at home, it should be located in the living room, a central and open location where you can sporadically check in.
- If the Internet café is their children’s favorite haunt, then they should also discuss rules for computer use with their kids. Suggest that they use the Internet together to familiarize with the kids’ online activities and programs used.
Supervise, monitor email and web traffic, and minimize access to dangerous sites
- There are websites that carry demeaning, racist, sexist or violent content; some have “adult” images or false information.
- Incorporate Internet literacy into your computer education curriculum so students can immediately leave a site once they distinguish signs of any of the abovementioned.
Discuss the value of privacy and the possibilities of identity theft online
Students should never enter information about themselves unless they are sure it is a secure site. Caution is the key since their addresses, ages and contact information, among others could wind up in a database for spamming, or could be used to harm or take advantage of them.
Report strangers
- Report any stranger asking for personal information, photos or videos, as well as unsolicited obscene materials, and those giving misleading URLs that point to sites with harmful materials.
- Also report anyone distributing child pornography or enticing sexual invitations (it is a crime for adults to make sexual invitations online).
Careful with the chatrooms
- Warn against chatrooms, the most dangerous area on the Internet. Child molesters find victims there; adults and older teens exploit younger people and lie about themselves. Inappropriate behavior should not be tolerated by anyone.
- Tell your students never to arrange for a face-to-face meeting with strangers met online.
Pause before posting
- Remind your students that information posted online, from photos to “profiles” to blog posts, cannot be taken back. It will already be public property, virtually viewable by everybody else. Even if these information have been deleted or modified, photos and text can still be retrieved, especially if someone else has saved the information.
- A lot of students have already been denied entry into schools, brushed off in recruitment due to dangerous, demeaning or harmful information found in personal sites or blogs.
- Advocate caution when using social networking sites. Privacy settings in sites like Friendster, Facebook and Multiply should be checked to minimize access only to people your students know.
Especially in the case of first-time Internet users, it is best if they know the dangers beforehand. A little warning can go a long way when it comes to being secure online and protecting your students from the dangers of the Internet.
Sources:
“A Call to Action: Be a Cyber Secure Kid!” Retrieved May 14, 2008 from
http://staysafeonline.org/practices/eight.html
“How to be a safe surfer.” Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://tcs.cybertipline.com/surfsafer.htm
“Know the dangers.” Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://tcs.cybertipline.com/knowthedangers.htm
Kornblum, Janet. “Rudeness, threats make the Web a cruel world.” Retrieved May 14, 2008 from
http://www.usatoday.com/educate/cybersecurity/NCSA_07_wk1.pdf
(Published 26 May 2008, Smart Communications, Inc.)
