I don’t recall having any cyber safety or digital citizenship education in elementary or high school. I attended a K-12 school with around 100 students total, and at times, I think there was this idea that we were good country kids and the internet was only a problem in the cities. This was very naive because kids will be kids regardless of where they live.
The school division was also slow at regulating and restricting access to material. For example, emails in my day were all @hotmail.com. Unfortunately, if you didn’t know how to spell ‘mail’…well, you can see how that might be problematic, especially if those sorts of websites weren’t blocked. We also all participated in an online chat room that included people from all over the world–many of whom I’m sure were not honest about their identities. It honestly shocks me that teachers didn’t know we were using this platform and that the school division wasn’t blocking chat rooms either. Here’s an article that outlines why chat rooms can be so dangerous.
It was when I was in university, and specifically in my education classes, that the concept of cyber safety and especially digital citizenship became very important. Professors used a lot of scare tactics:
- If you have a picture of yourself holding a drink, you will get fired
- You can not have any images of yourself in a bathing suit, or again, you’ll be fired
- Anything you have ever liked, commented on, or shared could get you fired
- Anyone who is considering hiring you will look at your social media and determine whether or not they want to hire you
The giph below sums up my experience, and if you have ever watched Mean Girls, you totally get this.
While some of these scare tactics are true, not all exist in the extremes that they were presented to us as undergrads. While this approach certainly made me take a hard look at the content I had posted online, it has also made me very conservative when it comes to my online presence–I essentially don’t have one. I will post pictures occasionally for family to see, but I don’t like, share, or comment on content that in any way may be perceived as controversial.