I don’t remember much education on cyber security or digital citizenship during my pre-university years. Most of my education surrounding cyber safety was through my dad, who was an RCMP officer and was aware of the dark side of the internet. I vaguely remember 3 instances of school-driven education around this topic.  

One was the scare tactic based ads during middle school. When I watched them, I viewed them as informative rather than being scared of the internet. I learned to be aware of the choices I made on the internet and only contacted people who I knew.  I also didn’t have Facebook, Instagram or any kind of social media until grade 11/12. This choice was partly due to my parents, but also partly due to my recognition that I didn’t need it. Most of my communication through middle and highschool was through gmail and the textplus/nextplus app on my ipod touch. I was satisfied with that level of communication until there was a need to upgrade it for school projects (Facebook messenger). 

 A couple months into grade 10, we had an assembly regarding the suicide of Amanda Todd. I remember watching the original video. I recall having a sense of shock and sadness at the time, questioning why or how someone could do that. We were aware of the concept of cyber-bullying in middle school, but Amanda Todd showed us what kind of repercussions cyber-bullying had. Although it was tragic, I learned that bullying didn’t have to be seen in the school for it to happen. 

Finally, the last instance I remember was an assembly with The White Hatter. I don’t recall whether it was during middle school or highschool, but he did leave an impression. He advocated for online privacy and internet safety. He would systematically go through what a black hat or predator would do to achieve their goal, then give solutions and countermeasures against them. I found the methods black hats / predators used were fascinating and solidified my approach to the internet and how I used it. I would argue that while this could be a form of a scare-tactic, it was also informative of its approach.

I think the best way to approach digital citizenship is to be informative. Show that while the digital realm has a lot of positives to gain, there is also a dark side of the realm one needs to be aware of and that it can take various forms. The direct dark side reflects the “stranger danger” and cyber-bullying aspects while the indirect dark side reflects privacy agreements and invasions with various media platforms.