Legality and Internet Safety

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    COPPA and CIPA are federal laws in place to keep children safe. As a high school teacher, I will be honest and say that I have never felt the need to be the one providing my students this information. I have always felt that this is something my students should have learned and understood by the time they reach my class. However, I now believe that students at all ages would benefit from learning internet safety. Looking back at my own experiences, I could have definitely used more information regarding internet safety throughout all of my school years.

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    It is Danah Boyd's belief that COPPA teaches kids to lie. I do think there is some truth to that. At the age of 11 or 12, I had been using Myspace, AOL Instant Messenger, and YouTube. I knew at the time that there were age requirements but I always just lied on the policy agreement and proceeded to use the platforms. CIPA and COPPA did not stop kids my age from using the social media platforms because we would just lie about our age. The only thing that could stop my friends was if their parents were strict about internet usage.

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    Although CIPA and COPPA are laws to protect children, I do not think that they are enough. With that being said, I also cannot sit here and say that I have a solution. I think that 15 might be a more appropriate age than 13 but I don't think changing the age will make a difference. In this day and age, kids have phones earlier than ever before. They have access to social media at the tip of their fingers. I have cousins who are 10 years old on social media. Moving the targeted age is not going to help if parents are not monitoring their kid's devices. The usage of social media is becoming inevitable, even at ages younger than 13. We know that children are going to be using social media. Most of the time, they will be lying that they are of proper age to use the apps. There may be nothing we can do about that. This is why I believe the best we can do is educate our students on safety.

    Once students understand how to use the internet safely, there is so much potential for great learning opportunities. One app I have used with my students is Flipgrid. This became a topic of conversation during remote learning because many were concerned that using Flipgrid was a violation of FERPA. It seems that it is not a violation since student information is not being collected and the videos are not shared publicly. Social media platforms in the school should only be used for educational purposes. I think that morally, it would be a good idea for teachers to get parental consent for services they are using even though according to COPPA they don't always need to since the school can provide that consent for the parents.

Comments

  1. Luis RomoApril 18, 2021 at 6:36 AM

    Alyssa,

    Reading your post made me realize that I'm not the only one who feels that educating our students in internet safety is important. I agree with you on the expectation that our students should know about internet safety when they reach our class but I think the opposite happens. You also made a very good point on the age where they can use social media. They are going to lie regarding what the age limit is to join. I think that there should be more parental control when it comes to monitoring social media apps. I guess it all depends on how parents see social media. It's their choice if they want to be strict or not. Don't you agree?

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