Horizon School Division brought in Dr. Alec Couros as part of both their Student Day 2017 and a workshop for parents, Raising the Selfie Generation on April 25.
While it was great to see the 35-40 parents and teachers who were there, it was disappointing to see the number of parents who were not there.
Speaking to any parent with a high school or even a middle school aged student they know the havoc phones, social media, and the internet are playing on their children’s lives, whether it is cyber bullying or just a general lack of privacy.
Any parent can tell stories of the stupidity that they see kids get into on Instagram, Snapchat, or other social media apps.
The thing is, parents do have the ability to get involved and as an educator, Couros says that parental attitudes can go either way on being involved with their children’s online lives.
“Parents sometimes feel that if they come to this that they won’t know enough to know more,” says Couros, or they feel they know all there is to know about their child’s internet and social media habits.
Couros rarely has a presentation where a parent comes up to him after saying they did not learn something, he says.
“For the most part it takes them to the next level of what they knew before.”
Couros showed the worst case scenarios for a lot of inappropriate behaviour online but he also assured parents that not every child is involved in things like this.
However, it just takes one second and one inappropriate post for kids to change their lives.
“I think most kids don’t understand fully what the implications of privacy settings or how to even use them properly,” says Couros so parents have to be the ones stepping up and understanding what could happen.
That also means there is a fine line to walk between protecting kids and letting them make their own online mistakes, says Couros, and it is not the same as in previous years.
“When it comes to online we can’t take on the exact same strategy that we did then because we know now that these mistakes are for the world to see.”
Having a strong relationship with your kids is the best possible defense for your kids online foot print, says Couros.
At previous presentations Couros even advised parents on potential spy software or apps they could use themselves, at their own risk of course.
He has heard and seen enough stories to know that having that strong, offline relationship with your child does so much more than spying on them because having that trust is more important than knowing what they are doing online every minute of every day.
I do not envy any parent who is going to have to deal with the present and future problems of online privacy and protection.
However, educating themselves is a first step.
