Internet Safety

The topics that were posted under “Internet Safety” were Peers, Porn, and Predators.  I know that we are supposed to keep these topics focused on one individual aspect of this but I am going to tell you about what happens to teenage girls.  I am going to talk about how all three of these topics can come into 1 BIG MESS.  Before we get into that we need to get some facts straight.  In 2010, it was reported that boys spend more time on computers than girls (Sahara Byrne, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2013).  That might have been the case in 2010 but that was before the age of the smart phone.  Amanda Lenhart in an article called Teens, Social Media & Technology (2015) said that 92% of teens report going online daily.  In the same article, nearly three-quarters of teens have access to a smartphone.  It can be easy to control what your teenage child does while at home and while you are in the other room but it becomes much more difficult when they have everything they need on their phone.

Facebook is now for “old people.”  Twitter is fun for information or news.  Teenagers are gravitating to Snapchat and Instagram.  Instagram is an app on your phone that allows you to post pictures and comments.  The goal there is to get likes and comments.  Snapchat allows you to post videos that you can either add to your story or send to individuals.  Snapchat has become a very popular app amongst at least my students.  Snapchat allows you to post a video and after the video is played, it is deleted.  If you decided to save the video the original user gets notified of it.  That was the case until 3^rd party apps like Sneakaboo.  Sneakaboo (Lewis Painter, 2017) allows you to get a bunch of coins when you first get the app which are spent on saving photos and videos, and once they’re gone, you have to pay (with real money) for more. 

Most used apps for teens

Tom. Uploaded 2015

 

Now that it has been explained, let me tell you how peers, porn and predators all come into one big mess.  Last year a student at a local high school had an app like the one listed above.  He was able to see things on his phone and save it without notifying the other person.  Over a period of time, he was able to amass over 1,000 pictures of teenage girls in various stages of undress.  Pictures and videos were sent directly to him.  His friends sent him pictures and videos that they received.  He has pictures from girls that were video chatting with other people and because the girls thought they were off screen he had pictures of that.  I have heard girls talking about not talking to certain guys anymore because they asked for pictures that they didn’t feel comfortable taking.  This guy was busted because he was showing his collection of pictures to other guys and eventually one of the other guys reported that to one of the schools that these girls were attending.

In the end peers, porn and predators can become the same person.  One of the things I have to remind girls every year is that any picture of them in various stages of undress can land their friends in big trouble. 

The question I ask you is:

How do you project teenagers from something that you don’t even know about?

How can you stay up on new technologies when they are constantly changing?