Digital Citizenship

Parents have a new tool from Google to help children learn about online safety and digital citizenry. Google's recently announced their "Be Internet Awesome" program that revolves around five core Internet principles. The tool includes educational resources and an online game called Interland, which features four lands through which young gamers come up against phishers, hackers, bullies, and over-sharers — those who reveal too much information about themselves online.

Google and partners also created a bunch of resources for teachers and a video series for parents, called the Be Internet Awesome Challenge, which is designed to make “talking about online safety fun and accessible”. Be Internet Awesome is the latest in a series of initiatives by Google to promote the Internet as a safe and positive place for everyone. In April, Google-owned YouTube launched Internet Citizens, a series of workshops aimed at educating teens in the United Kingdom on how to combat issues like fake news, echo chambers, and offensive speech.

As the retraction of acceptance offers to potential Harvard students because of their online activity reminds us, there are real-life consequences for virtual actions. What can parents do? Ana Homayoun, the author of a forthcoming book called  “Social Media Wellness: Helping Teens and Tweens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World” in a piece in The New York Times reminds parents that they need to shift the conversation around teens’ social media use away from a fear of getting caught and more toward healthy socialization, effective self-regulation and overall safety. This could become all the more important if a bill that was just overwhelmingly passed in the House becomes law. The bill could make it a felony — punishable by 15 years in jail — if teens send consensual nude photos of themselves.

Jenny Grabiec, the Director of Technology at The Fletcher School, has a free book out called iCan with iOS: Apps, Tools & Strategies for Students with Learning and Attention Issues, but as she points out in an article on the Edutopia site, assistive technology can benefit all students. Grabiec states that for all students, with or without learning differences, using text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools are shown to read longer, write longer, and show a great improvement in spelling. Clock apps, with timers and alarms, can help students stay on task and be used for important reminders during the day. Interested in these kinds of apps? Take a look at the Edutopia Assistive Technology: Resource Roundup as well.

The conviction of Michelle Carter for urging her boyfriend by text message to commit suicide, seems like an ultimate case of cyberbullying. Critics say, though, there may be an issue with the law being stretched. While the verdict should encourage parents to talk about and pay closer attention to what their children are texting to their friends, in theory a friend who simply expresses sympathy for a despondent friend’s desire to take their own life could soon be held liable for that death. This is something that will be interesting to see how it plays out in the courts.

Where should you look when a question comes up at home about setting parental controls or whether you should post those pictures of your kids online? Try the Privacy and Internet Safety section of the Common Sense Media site. While there are research articles all over the web with information on this subject, this section covers a wide range of topics and is something you might want to add to your browser’s bookmarks for quick reference.

“Phigital” is the recently coined name for the current generation of kids  - Gen Z -who do not draw a distinction between the physical and digital worlds and are comfortable (or apparently comfortable)in both.

What exactly does that mean? For these kids, digital is EVERYTHING. They do not remember a time before the Internet or before the existence of WiFi, so they expect that access is a part of everything. At school, this means they expect the incorporation of mobile devices in their classroom, as well as mobile strategies for helping them learn and catch up on or supplement their classwork. Parents and teachers need to remember that for the “phigital” mindset, the real world is never more than a click away so everything they do needs to be relevant in real life. Hold on world, it looks like a major generation clash is about to get underway.

A study by researchers at Swansea University and Milan University find that symptoms of Internet withdrawal -- increased anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate -- are close to what drug addicts experience. Participants in the study, ages 18 to 33, were self-confessed Internet addicts who reported spending an average of five hours a day online.

Teaching kids about the security vulnerabilities with Internet of Things (IoT) devices can help them avoid falling prey to hackers, writes Jacob Batchelor in an article entitled You've Been Hacked! Explaining Cybersecurity to Students in an Interconnected Era. Batchelor explains ways to introduce the problem of hacking to kids, help them recognize the problem of IoT hacks, and show them what they can do to protect their privacy. Experts predict that in just a few years, interconnected devices such as refrigerators, baby monitors, toys, Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, will number in the billions.

Keeping up with social media and the constant stream of new apps emerging can be overwhelming for parents. A recent article entitled Tips Toward a Safe and Positive Social Media Experience offers tips for digital safety. The article also includes a list of harmful apps, such as Calculator%, a secret app that looks like a calculator but is actually a vault for hiding photos and videos, and Blue Whale, a suicide challenge app that attempts to prod children into killing themselves. The app is a haven for child predators and it is common for children to be blackmailed and bullied into completing the game where a final task is suicide.

A recent survey administered by Carbon Black looks at consumers’ responses to ransomware, and you may find the results surprising. The study found that if hacked, 52% of consumers would shell out a ransom for their data, and 12% would pay $500 or more. It was also found that consumers are less trusting of retailers with their data than they are of banks and health care providers. Furthermore, the majority of consumers believe the responsibility is on the individual businesses to keep their data safe, ahead of cybersecurity companies/cybersecurity software vendors, software providers (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.), and government organizations (FBI, NSA, CIA, etc.).