ESA Assembly: How to live safely in an 'online' and 'connected' world
Connections are vital to our happiness. The beauty and the curse of social media is that it is possible to connect so quickly and easily with anyone. I love to connect, both online and in person, but I think it is good to take a moment every now and then and think about the validity of these relationships and the way in which you connect with others.
Facebook is my social media of choice; I would doubt if it is yours as it seems to be for people of a certain (other) generation. My examples are going to be from there but I hope that you will be able to find something that resonates with whichever form of social media you choose to use.
I deleted someone as a friend the other day. They were constantly very loudly political which I was getting a bit bored of. Also, in addition, if I posted a picture of one of my children wearing a particular football shirt then they always made a derogatory comment. No big deal you might think. I totally get that there is football banter but I just found myself having to explain to my eleven year old why some man he had never met was making nasty comments about the team he loves and I couldn’t be bothered anymore. One way to look at this is that I could just not post pictures of my son wearing a football shirt if I didn’t want to get into a debate. Maybe you are right? Anyway, I deleted this man, (I toyed with blocking him and decided that was excessive), and thought no more about it. Until, two days later, I had a message from him asking why we weren’t friends any longer. AWKWARD. #shouldveblockedhim I was going to ignore the message as I couldn’t be bothered to get into it but in the end I decided that as he had had the guts to ask me, I should grace him with a reply. We had a few polite messages back and forth and then it awkwardly finished. Except it didn’t, as he then asked me to be his friend again! If social media didn’t exist then when I had left the workplace that we both worked at six years ago, I probably wouldn’t have seen or heard from him again, and it made me think about the amount of people I am choosing to stay connected with and how worthwhile these connections are?
On the flipside, I have reconnected through social media with many people from years ago that I would have completely lost contact with had it not existed. This is not a problem that you will have as social media did not exist when I was at school or at university. I think this is probably a good thing as I am not sure that I would have necessarily made the right and mature decisions at every point in my social media life had it existed then! I have been impressed, over and again, with the decisions that I have seen students make regarding their own digital footprint and their lack of tolerance of cyberbullying.
I have a few questions that I think are helpful before posting online:
Would you say that to a person if they were standing in front of you or on the phone?
Would you allow that image of yourself to be projected in a room full of people that you were also in?
Can you stand by the statement you have just made online if you were questioned about it in person?
Please find below two links to questions that relate more specifically to content posted on Snapchat and Instagram:
https://swgfl.org.uk/resources/checklists/snapchat/
https://swgfl.org.uk/resources/checklists/instagram/
You may well be bored of hearing about online safety but I make no apology for going on about it either to students I teach or to my own children (who roll their eyes whenever I mention the phrase).
I had the honour last year of co-writing the education pack that went with a new verbatim play called ‘Game Over’ by Mark Wheeller. This play was written about a boy called Breck Bednar who was murdered at the age of 14, by an 18 year old called Lewis Daynes who he met online.
There are many, many harrowing details about this case but what I found most distressing was that Breck’s Mum had seen how potentially dangerous this online relationship was and had tried to stop it. This seemed to spur the groomer on further to make Breck his target. At the premiere performance of the play last year, Breck’s family were in the front row. I found myself watching them almost as much as I was watching the play. There wasn’t anyone that wasn’t moved to tears by the end of the performance.
https://beaumontschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/BBC_One-2019-07-12_18-16-28-1-1.mp4?_=1
Sorry, not sorry, to end on such a negative. It does happen. It does happen to people like you. Don’t let it happen to you or anyone that you love. Stay connected and love your online life but please, please, please, stay safe.
https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre
Words by Mrs Ward