Facebook Safety Rules

I grew up in Toronto where my generation were taught safety by Elmer the Safety Elephant. He has a flag that your school could only fly if you remained accident free. Those were the days when safety was mostly about auto traffic and crossing roads. Times have changed.
Some schools are “with it” and are teaching their charges the ways to stay safe on the internet early and often. This is great. Learn the skills young and they’ll be ready for the future that they will experience – not some rosy-hued nostalgic retro-vision. Some schools, I feel foolishly, think that limiting access to an ever-growing list of certain sites and certain words, somehow results in a safer world for kids. While guided by good intentions, it likely abdicates responsibility for educating kids for the world of the future. It may even endanger them by increasing their naivete.
The following article from Cornell is aimed at the university level student. I think it’s important for us to think about the role K-12 schools play in building skills, awareness and aptitudes for bridging to the post-secondary and adult worlds.
Five things to think about when using Facebook
From Tracy Mitrano, Director of IT Policy and Computer Policy & Law Program, Cornell University, April, 2006
Here’s the conclusion but I recommend that you read the whole report.
“Facebook, along with much of the Internet, is a great innovation that allows users to express their humanity and an opportunity to create new communities. As such it represents a forum in which one can make choices about their identity, at least insofar as one chooses to represent themselves publicly. That freedom does not suggest that one can do so with impunity, however. Because we live in a society in which expression is judged in legal, policy and even personal ways, it is important to remember the consequences of that expression no matter how ephemeral or fun in the moment it might seem to be.
This essay offers some things to contemplate when using Facebook, all of which can be summed up easily in a “Golden Rule.” Don’t say anything about someone else that you would not want said about yourself. And be gentle with yourself too! What might seem fun or spontaneous at 18, given caching technologies, might prove to be a liability to an on-going sense of your identity over the longer course of history. Have fun and make productive use of these new, exciting technologies, but remember that technology does not absolve one of responsibility. Behind every device, behind every new program, behind every technology is a law, a social norm, a business practice that warrants thoughtful consideration.”
You can find it here.
Wise counsel here.
Stephen