I thought I would put a post together to coincide with safer internet day, the 6^th Feb 2024.    Safer internet day represents an opportunity to stop and recognise the importance of online safety however it is also important to recognise that our understanding of digital risks isnt confined to a single day but is something we should be constantly considering.

I will be honest and say that I generally feel we do not do enough in relation to digital citizenship, which is the broader concept which encompasses online safety, in schools.   Yes, schools have safer internet day, they have content in their PSHE education programme plus in their KS1, 2 and 3 Computer Science programmes, and for those students choosing to study computing or IT subjects at A-Level or in vocational qualifications, but it is limited content and this is against a backdrop of increasing use of digital tools and increasing sharing of data.   We believe basic maths and basic literacy are requirements for all; I believe basic digital citizenship should also be a requirement and a subject in itself.

So, if it was a subject what would the topics be?

I already try and deliver sessions for students throughout the year in relation to number of digital citizenship topics which includes:

Fake News

I think this is a very important subject given the ease with which fake images and even fake audio and video can now be created through the use of Generative AI.    Recent cases with fake Taylor Swift videos and fake Joe Biden audio are a case in point. How might we tell the fake from the real, but also what about those individuals who say or do something inappropriate only to claim they didn’t, and that the footage or audio is fake?    How do we establish truth in world where we can no longer believe what we see or hear?

Big Data

We are constantly given away data, and more than we realise.  And it isnt just about the data we give away, but also about the data which might be inferred from what we give away.    Consider where you live, the car you drive and where you shop for example;   How might this information help to infer something about your wealth or earnings?    What does your weekly shop say about you and your family? And remember it doesn’t need to always be right, it just needs to generally be right more than its wrong to have value.    Then there are the organisations willing to pay for your data or to sell your data on.   Might we get to a point where, through data, some companies know more about us than we know about ourselves and at that point, what is the potential for us to be influenced or even controlled.

Binary arguments and echo chambers

The medium used to communicate has an impact on the message, with this being all the more apparent on social media where things go viral, with agreement, or viral with disagreement so very quickly.  The medium shapes our views through its algorithms, connecting stories with those likely to engage either in agreement or in disagreement, thereby enhancing divides and encouraging most discussions to descend into binary arguments.    As you engage with social media, it will try to feed you the info you want to hear, which therefore tends to reinforce the views you already have rather than providing alternative viewpoints.   So in consuming information and news from social media we need to be conscious of how social media works and therefore how it might shape the news it presents and eventually our viewpoints.

Balance – Public Good and Personal Privacy

Balance as a concept is something I believe strongly in.   For ever advantage there is a corresponding risk or draw back.   And in some many decisions we operate on a continuum rather than with polar opposites.  Take public good vs. personal privacy for example.    We want to be safe so expect the police and intelligence services to monitor in search of terrorists and other threats.   Yet, we also want our individual privacy so to be free from monitoring.    Can we have both?     The answer is no, we need to find some balance between a “reasonable” level of surveillance and monitoring balanced out against a “reasonable” level of individual privacy.    Taking the discussion of encryption, the challenge here is that weak encryption is weak for all, so monitoring anyone is difficult without putting all at risk.   Now there are solutions here such as monitoring at the device level where encrypted communications need to be decrypted to display, however this is difficult as it requires access to the device.    We basically have an imperfect situation, and sometimes in this complex world we need to live with imperfect.

Cyber Security

As we use more digital tools, share more data and generally use technology more and more we need to be more and more conscious of cyber risks and how to remain secure.   This is in the accounts we use, the data we share, the use of MFA, but also in the devices we own including updating our devices such as laptops and phones, but also the increasing number of IoT devices we have such as smart plugs and voice assistants.   We need to give some consideration to cyber security in all purchases, and in each system or service we seek to use.  It may even be necessary to accept that every piece of technology used represents increased risk, so the question then becomes is the gain from using the service sufficient to outweigh the risk?

Addiction and Being Human

How many times have you seen a major event such as a new years fireworks display with people all holding up their phones to film the event, so all experiencing the event through their smart phone screen?   Or have you been on a train or in a restaurant and seen countless people staring at their phones?   Is this the way we want to live and does this change our experience of life?  Yes it might give us a nice video of the event which we can then go back to in future but how often do we do this and if we didn’t record the event would we spend more time interacting with those around us, with this resulting in something more memorable?    What does being human look like in this technology enabled, technology curated and technology filtered world?

Conclusion

The above are just some of the areas I discuss with students and I note I don’t have the answers as I spend a little too much time on digital devices, I share more data than I likely need to, etc.  What I do hope to do however is build awareness and start a discussion as this is I believe what matters.    We need to be thinking about the challenges and risks and ensure our students, our young people, are aware of them and are making educated decisions.

I hope everyone has an enjoyable safer internet day;  Stay safe online!