This post is written as a guide for high school students on using the Internet safely, respectfully, and effectively.
Right now, a lot of noise is made about the need for teenagers to be safe online, but its not always clear what that means. Even though safety sounds important, most of the people we interact with online are across town, if not across the globe, so how could that be dangerous? It turns out data has become incredibly important. It can be used to hurt people financially, physically, and emotionally in very real ways. By following a few general guidelines, you can avoid getting hurt, or hurting others, when you are online.
Know your privacy settings
Julia Angwin, in an interview on NPR, said "If something is supposed to be free then it really means that they're taking your data." While that quote is part of her explanation for why she avoids the free wifi offered in many coffee shops, it applies just as well to anything online, including social networks. Because your data is the real product, the default on most social networks is to make whatever you post public. Even if you're okay with your boss, your teachers, or your grandma seeing everything you post online, someone with something to gain can piece together a significant picture of who you are from the footprints you leave behind. For example, a
MotherJones article explains how Twitter is able to track a single user across multiple devices, making it possible for advertisers to target the ads you see in games on your phone based on the websites you were just browsing on a laptop. If the ads don't bother you, sites like
Please Rob Me should still make you stop and think. The website does a simple search for Twitter and FourSquare users who've publicly checked in somewhere, making it public that their home is empty.
While many social media websites are
making it more difficult to keep your information private, most have a help page that provides information on what their privacy settings mean and how to adjust them. Check out these links to find information from a few of the big names:
Just because there are risks to using social media doesn't mean you should automatically use the most restrictive privacy settings possible, but it is important to see what your options are and to be aware of what you are sharing and who you are sharing it with.
Be careful what you put online
Go to Google and do a quick search of your name. How many of the search results are things you actually expected to find? Chances are at least some of the hits are from websites you've never visited, but have scrubbed your name and profile picture from Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. Common Sense Media looks at a more personal situation, where a student named
Brittany shares a story of posting videos from a game of truth or dare online, only to deeply regret it when the videos spread not only among her peers, but to her parents and other adults in the community.
The consequences to what you post can go well beyond embarrassment. In a
column for the New York Times, Natasha Singer wrote that many colleges now look at the social media presence of applicants and certain kinds of posts can affect whether or not a student gets in. According to an
article from Forbes, it isn't just colleges who may look at your social media posts. A growing number of employers are also looking at what you've put online before they decide whether to hire you.
Most employers and colleges will be turned off by photos that show someone smoking, drinking, doing drugs, or promoting these activities, especially since these are all illegal for most high school students. Photos that are clearly sexual or show you partially clothed are also likely to make employers and colleges unsure about you. Finally, if you use most of your public posts to complain about work or school or use them to tear down others, you are not showing a side of yourself that an employer or college will want to invite in.
This does not mean you shouldn't use social media. If you post the right kind of material, your social media presence can raise your chances of getting into a college or getting a job. In
another video from Common Sense Media, a student named Abbas shares how he uses social media to share his volunteering, promote the community group he is a leader in, and express his love for his family. Use social media to share the parts of your life that you are proud of.
Assume everything you post is public and permanent
So you've learned how to use the privacy settings on all your social media and the material you've left public is the kind of stuff you can brag to your grandma about. Does that mean you can post whatever you want to the private sections? No! Even with good privacy settings, you should still assume that everything you post can be made available to anyone who really wants to see it and that it will be around forever. Whether you want to keep it private from your teacher right now or you think you'd be embarrassed to show it to your boss in a few decades, the safest bet is to keep it off of social media. While you may have done everything in your power to keep it private, there are still ways someone else could get around it. For example, many people assume that Snapchat is a relatively safe way to share photos, since images are automatically deleted after a few seconds and, if the recipient takes a screenshot, the sender gets a message, but people have been
finding ways around the screenshot notification almost as fast as Snapchat can improve their security. Anything you post online can be made public with just a few clicks if someone else wants to put it out there.
Promote positive interactions
When you are online, you not only need to protect yourself, but to make sure you aren't the one hurting someone else. Cyberbullying is a popular buzzword right now. Bullying is nothing new, but the Internet adds new challenges. In
an interview on NPR, Emily Bazelon pointed out that "when I got home from school, there was a break. I didn't have to deal with [my friends] directly, and I could soft of put myself back together in the afternoon and evening. Whereas now when you come home if you're a victim of bullying, you're likely to see this continue on a social media site or via texting." Making school and other public places feel unsafe or unwelcoming to any of your peers is bullying and unacceptable. When you take bullying online, the tools the target should use to reach out to friends for support also become unwelcoming and unsafe.
Not only does cyberbullying have a longer reach than traditional bullying, its easier to do. In what
John Suler calls the online disinhibition effect, something about posting online makes people feel like they can say things they would never say in a face-to-face conversation. To make matters worse, while cyberbullying may be easier to do than the in-person kind,
some studies show it has a much larger impact on the victims.
Do you want to be the kind of person who uses your influence online to hurt others, or to create something positive? If you wouldn't say something to someone's face or if it is likely to hurt the person you are talking about, don't post it online. Even if you don't intend to share it with the person you are talking about, it can still get back to them and it can still hurt.
You can also do more than just choose not to engage in cyberbullying. Which is more likely to get you to stop: me telling you an action is cyberbullying, or one of your friends telling you that something you are doing is wrong? For most people, their peers have a much bigger influence on how they act than authority figures do. You can be a positive influence on the people you interact with online by calling out posts or actions that look like cyberbullying.
For more information,
Google has a short anti-bullying guide.
Respect the privacy of others
An extremely important piece of respecting others online is respecting their privacy. Sharing a link or an inspirational quote that a friend posted online is harmless, but sharing more personal posts can hurt others. In many cases, if someone shared a post with only certain people, they did that for a good reason. Don't share the post beyond the intended audience or make it public. There are many things it makes sense to share with a select group of close friends, but not with the wider public and it is up to the person that information is about, not you, to decide who is the correct audience. Sharing something intended to be a secret can be a form of cyberbullying.
The example that gets the most headlines is sexting gone wrong. With how easy it has become to take a share a photo, some teenagers are taking very intimate pictures and sharing them with a select audience. All too often, someone decides to share those pictures well beyond whoever was supposed to see them. (Remember from earlier how you should assume nothing is private online?) This can not only be incredibly hurtful to the person in the photo, but it can get the person (or people) sharing the picture in
serious legal trouble. In most states, if the person in the photo is under the age of 18, these pictures are considered child pornography, which means than anyone sharing these photos can face legal charges and may have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life.
Want to learn more?
These websites have more information on how to stay safe online, so that you can focus on all the benefits the Internet has to offer.
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