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Digital “Chain-Letters”…

Our twelve year old “tween-ager” had a good learning experience this week.  Fortunately, it wasn’t too severe but it still created new awareness and learning.  It came to our attention that a “chain-letter” style text was being passed around amongst her and her friends.  The text said something along the lines of, “Pass this on to 15 of your friends and  a cute boy will tell you that he likes you and if you don’t, you’ll wake up to find a dead child in your room!”

We had thought that we had covered digital safety when she first got the phone, such as digital permanence, what is sexting and what makes sexting illegal, beware of any strangers that try to contact you etc.  However, this recent example shows that there’s always something new to be wary of when it comes to technology.

Digital Influences and Pressure

For me, with the chain-letter-text, it was the issue of pressure and influence that I wanted our daughter to be most aware of.  Just because it’s being forwarded on to each other, does it mean that one just automatically does the same?  If it makes you feel uncomfortable, then one needs to listen to that internal feeling and stop and think about it.  Would this make your friends feel comfortable receiving this text?  Do you really think a chain-letter-text has the power to threaten you that you will really find a dead child in your room? Do you want this chain-letter-text to be part of your digital footprint?

Digital Footprints

In the same week, Chris Kennedy, the superintendent of the West Vancouver School District, wrote a blog about digital footprints.  He recently met with new teacher candidates at UBC and gave them this advice:

We remind them to lock-down their privacy on Facebook, to remove the photos on Instagram holding a glass of wine, to take down the blog post they wrote about their wild trip to Europe and otherwise try to cleanse their digital presence. ~ Chris Kennedy

He also encouraged them to build up a positive digital presence by starting a blog, follow other educators on Twitter, and “Yes” he usually “Googles” every person he meets.

Digital “Un-Privacy”

Also, in this past week, I watched the following You Tube video by Mark Cuban (Owner of the NBA team, Dallas Mavericks, and a “shark investor” on Shark Tank) who expressed the importance of being aware of your life on-line because it’s all being tracked!  Have you noticed how Amazon and Facebook know exactly what advertisements or recommended products to send your way?

Every site we visit, every person we follow on Twitter, all of it creates a profile (a digital footprint) of our identity on-line which he says is being collected by applications at every moment!  In the future, he predicts potential job prospects will be able to run an analysis of job applicants to get a summary of their on-line tweets, Facebook comments, Instagram photos etc. etc.  (He has created an app called Cyber-dust to dissolve one’s texts and social media messages after they’ve been read.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uttAdIhfAHc

Our world has never been so “connected”, as far as being able to find long lost friends, tweet celebrities or thought leaders, follow mentors on Facebook and see our favourite personalities photographs on Instagram.  However, we have to be even more vigilant and mindful about every word or photo that we put out there, and our children need to know that even the websites they visit and You Tube videos they watch are being tracked.

This website, Learningworksforkids.com has a list of excellent apps for setting restrictions on digital devices.

Have a wonderful and digitally mindful week 🙂  Please share this important information with your friends and family using the social media sharing buttons.

Warmly,

PS.  Are you curious about Why Children Lie & What To Do About It?  Click on Free Report to find out the answers.