OPINION: Keeping Our Children Safe

Our children’s lives are much different than they were 30, 20 or even 10 years ago.  With the use of smart phones, their worlds are opened up and consequently kids are exposed to so much more information at a young age. This can have both positive and negative impacts. As the school year begins, I believe it is important to have dialogue with our children about internet safety and proper use of smart phones. In Harford, we constantly are looking at the impacts of new technology on students’ lives. The legislature passed a law, which I cosponsored, dealing with student data privacy. As schools contract with third party vendors, such as bus companies, Powerschool and FamilyID, we need to make sure that the information gathered by these vendors are kept secure and not shared or sold to other companies for marketing or some other non-educational purpose. These protections, however, effectively can be undone if students are sharing sensitive information on the internet. My son reminded me about this fact when he jumped on the Internet to register for high school soccer and pay the new fee. He readily began providing the information on-line without knowing where it was going and how it was being collected. Because it was a school or “academic” function, he quickly trusted the database. It was then that I realized how overly comfortable the younger generations are with the Internet. Every post on social media, every registration form, and every trivial survey on your interests or what animal you’re most like, is collected and stored somewhere. All of this information creates a digital profile, and as a state representative, I can sponsor laws to try and protect us all from abuse of this technology, but ultimately we need to begin protecting ourselves at home. When children are using social media by posting pictures and remarks, they are creating a digital footprint that will follow them for the rest of their life. Images or remarks that are made at the age of twelve can impact a person’s future college, scholarship or job prospects. Whether it’s fair or not, students need to understand the impact of the World Wide Web and parents must set the ground rules to keep them safe.  Here are some safety tips for parents:  learn how to use the technology, cell phones, gaming consoles and computers; set up ground rules for your children; keep computers in common areas and set appropriate parental controls on them; check the “history” on your computers and know what programs your child is using and who your child has “friended” on any programs. Go through your child’s friends list and talk about why each one is part of their social media network. A child needs to understand that if you would not let a person into your home or would not share personal information with them, then they should not be “friending” them on a social media website. Be sure to turn off your child’s location tracking. Otherwise photographs that are uploaded to the internet can be tracked to the exact location those pictures were taken. So many social issues can come out of the Internet.  If adults can be mean and engage in cyberbullying on Facebook, it’s hard to imagine what can occur between students. These concerns are growing. Even Boy Scouts has begun an annual mandatory program called Cyber Chip for scouts to learn about internet protocols. Another great resource is http://internetsafetyconcepts.com or http://www.ruindanger.net. As school begins, please have dialogue with your children on safe use of the Internet and cyber bullying. We can try our best to protect your children through legislation in Hartford, but students need to ultimately be armed to protect themselves.