Internet Safety Assignment

Blogging:

For this assignment, I read Elder Bednar's talk "Thing as They Really Are," watched the Frontline documentary "Growing Up Online," and looked at a couple of the resources on iKeepSafe.org. I thought both Elder Bednar's talk and the Frontline documentary were particularly interesting. I feel like I am right of the cusp of the generation gap. Social networking sites started to become popular right around the time I graduated from high school. When I was single, I used to spend a lot of time talking to friends through instant messaging, myspace, or facebook. I used to think it was pretty funny when news report would try and explain myspace or facebook to parents. In the "Growing Up Online" documentary, most of the kids interviewed said they know not to meet up with a stranger and other dangerous activities. I think it is true that most kids won't have problems with predators unless they go looking for trouble. However, I think the sense of sharing too much personal information online is a big problem. I know I have been shocked by what some of my friends have posted onto their profiles on social networking sites. Although most of my friends are adults now and can make their own decisions, I think some of their parents would be surprised to find out about what is really going on in their childrens' lives, and it probably wouldn't reflect well to future employers. One thing I hadn't thought much about before was cyberbullying. The story of the boy who killed himself after being bullied online and receiving encouragement from a "friend" was heartbreaking. I think the main idea I took away from this assignment as a future teacher and parents was the need to teach kids that they should follow the same rules they have been taught to follow in the "real world" on the internet. It goes back to having integrity and always treating others with respect.

Doing:

For the teaching part of this assignment I talked to my mom and my three siblings (ages 19, 17, & 15). My siblings have actually been taught a lot about internet safety already at school, which is a good thing. My mom is also a teacher and she has used social networking sites before so she was already pretty informed as well. However, I shared some of the stories from both the documentary I watched and the talk I read, and we discussed how it is important to have face-to-face interactions and not just live through the internet. We also talked about how you should be careful with your information and how you should you always be kind to others even if you don't have to face them in person. It was an interesting conversation.