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December 26, 2008
TAG talks online safety
Parents and teens learn to use the Internet wisely.
SARA NEWHAM
“The foreign influence of the Internet and its universal presence in our lives and homes poses a greater risk to Jewish thought, life and culture than did the Greeks in ancient times."
That was how Rabbi Stephen Berger introduced an Internet safety workshop for parents and teens at King David High School on Dec. 15.
About 100 people attended the event, which was hosted by TAG, a student-centred Jewish educational and social program for teens that promotes learning and critical thinking. Designed to give both parents and teens information and tools to equip themselves for the threats posed by Internet use, the workshop resonated with attendees.
"It was a really big eye-opener because I didn't know that all these things could possibly happen to me just for talking to my friends online," said 14-year-old Jacqueline Kierszenblat. "I'm really gonna be a lot safer and make sure I know everyone on my list and change my privacy settings so only I and my friends and the people I want see to see my stuff can see them."
For two hours, representatives from Safe Online Outreach Society (SOLOS) told each age group about various safety concerns on the Internet, useful in an era where reportedly 23 per cent of youth spend more than three hours a day online. Everything from MSN Instant Messenger, Nexopia, Facebook and cyberbullying was discussed during the presentation and, while parents gasped at the threats their children may encounter, they may have been even more shocked to learn that most of the 46 students in attendance had multiple e-mail addresses and more than 100 online instant messaging buddies and at least a dozen had – even if inadvertently – been exposed to online pornography. While some students were taught about the Internet by a sibling or a friend, most of the kids taught themselves.
"I think that young people are using these technologies even more so than the adults. Adults don't have a lot of the tools that they need to really properly educate their children on this stuff and so the youth in a lot of cases are going online and learning themselves and a lot of youth are finding ways to do that in a safe way and sometimes there's gaps in their understanding," said Dolphin Kasper, a program facilitator with SOLOS.
Parents learned that they need to engage with their teens and how rules, like not meeting online acquaintances in person, can cut the incidence of such in-person meetings from 34 per cent to 15 per cent. They were advised to keep computers in open areas – not in a teen's bedroom.
They also learned the grim realities of cyberbullying, which can be worse than traditional in-school bullying because of the speed and breadth of technology. To that end, parents were advised to encourage their youth to print out an example of someone bullying them online.
"It was really useful. A little scary. I had no idea about some of it," said Liz Komer, a parent of two teens. Komer said she plans to have a discussion with her children about their Internet use. "Would you let your kid go to Brazil? You want to find out as much as you can about it and that made me really realize how much I don't know and how much I need to work on this."
Teens on the other hand, learned to restrict their privacy settings to only their trusted friends on Facebook and other social networking sites, to check the content in their shared folder on the computer when using peer-to-peer sharing sites and to be wary of the photographs they post. Kasper told the students that every Internet site is archived at archive.org so items posted on the Internet stay there, forever. He explained that employers now search the Internet before making hiring decisions and, if a compromising photograph is found, it may destroy a youth's chance at a job now or in the future.
"I didn't realize that people could take my picture and change it to make it look like I was doing other things," said Kierszenblat.
While the Internet can be used for positive interactions and online learning, it takes only minutes to alter a completely innocent photograph into something more detrimental. Kasper also told the kids that people who use Facebook agree to allow Facebook to use their information and material however they want in perpetuity.
"It was good so more people are informed about what can happen because I didn't know that everything that's on Facebook is saved forever. Not that I have anything bad but if anything was ever potentially used somewhere else," said Talya Cohen, 14.
Sara Newham is a Vancouver freelance journalist.
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