Safety.

Hola a todos! I hope you are having a lovely week. I am stopping by to talk about something that certainly concerns us: safety. Safety for our children and teenagers and even for ourselves.
Social media and the internet have been with us for a while now, so long that I don’t remember what life was like.
But of course, I remember what it was like in the beginning—a lot of freedom. I was talking to strangers, playing games, and sending funny things to friends. I also think about how often I was in danger because my parents didn’t take the internet for what it was, but who did back then? Everyone was thirsty for more, discovery, and knowledge.
I remember the first time something related to social networking happened at my school. The police came to my classroom; I was eight years old. They gave a talk about the types of cyberbullying. At that time, I didn’t understand that this talk was repeated in several schools. Someone had been bullied and had ended their life. The internet was suddenly not so friendly.
In the years that followed, the subject was never discussed again. The internet was adopted as something positive in the classroom as if the danger had never existed.
By the time I was about 14 years old, it was common to hear my male classmates in the back of the room talking about the sexual content they saw, the same content that as a “joke” they would play at recess.
At the school where I interned as a college student, it was common to see kids as young as 10 or 11 with phones bigger than their hands, constantly texting or watching videos with headphones. It was common for teachers to search for them, but I tried not to make it sound negative or punitive.
However, after recounting these experiences, I realize how out of control technology, the internet, and social media are. We, the adults responsible for the children we care for, should be able to put a stop to this type of situation, but the effort we make is sometimes in vain or nonexistent.
In my school, again, when I was little, it was like that, the punishment was used (which was to confiscate the mobile phone) but often the students, my classmates, were not interested in being called attention, as the teachers did not carry out their threats.
In my opinion, the school should be a mobile phone-free place. I understand that children should have access to it to do homework and look for information, but teachers or parents should control all this.
Children do not need a mobile phone at school but use it to kill free time. A school with enough group and individual activities could compensate for the continuous and obsessive use of the internet and social media. Bring us a little closer to what childhood was like in the past.
I have people close to me who work in schools in rural areas. Children have the freedom to run, play, and interact with each other and even with animals. Because of the lack of connectivity, the government provides them with learning materials to play with, all far away from an iPad or a new television.
Learning and getting closer to technology and the internet is essential, but is it more important than childhood? I don’t think so.