As I have referenced maaaany times, I am kind of old. Not by all standards but by technologies for sure. Especially when we get down to questions like, “what did you learn about ‘x’ in school?” As far as internet safety we weren’t taught a lot, especially in elementary. When I was in elementary school we were just being introduced to dial-up and the safety there was make sure your family knew you were on the computer so they didn’t pick up the phone while you had been waiting to download a random webpage for the past 10minutes.

Does anyone remember AskJeeves? He’s the butler we asked questions like “how many types of spiders are there?” before Google was invented!

I feel like at this time there wasn’t really a safety to really understand to be taught at this point. However, I do remember when my friends and I started finding chatrooms – I know there’s for sure a few of us who remember “a/s/l” – that there was a little fearmongering for safety on the internet but just as much as you would be leery of any stranger. We were told if talking to people we didn’t know that we should never give them our full names or addresses, pretty common sense for sure. I remember that no matter what age I was I would give “17/f/Canada” and let me tell you…  I definitely was NOT 17! Haha.

If you used a/s/l, did you lie about yours or have an alter-ego?
Do you younger people have an equivalent of this that you used?

For my daughter and my future students, I like what Amanda Todd’s mother has suggested for teaching internet safety. This is to help them make an online forum or presence but instead of uploading their actual photos, do it for a pet or maybe a stuffed animal if they don’t have a pet, to get used to seeing the comments people can make and use them as a conversation starter/teaching moment. This can go for any platform as well. If we help them and allow them to use these tools instead of ban them from them, they will hopefully be less affected by the negativity that is so readily available like Amanda Todd found out.