Privacy is a term that has many different meanings depending
on the person it describes and/or the person using it. I used to think it had a simple meaning:
privacy means not allowing other people to know things about you that you don’t
want them to know. However, since the
internet has surfaced, privacy has taken on new dimensions to its previous
“easy” definition. The internet allows
people access to banking, bill paying, education, social media and the list
goes on and on. In order to use these
sites, people need to create passwords.
Passwords do not necessarily guarantee protection. Hackers are constantly working to breach
“secure sites” to obtain personal information.
Financial information is often a target for these hackers. So, it would be easy to conclude that if a
person wants privacy, they should not bank online. This would be an erroneous conclusion because
companies, including banks, have their customer information on their company
databases (Punagin and Arya, 2015). This
could be an avenue for hackers to use (no matter how conscientious the consumer
is) to obtain personal information. This
is becoming increasingly concerning for the majority of United States Citizens
(Spiekermann and Cranor, 2009). People
are beginning to realize that seemly harmless perks like customer rewards cards
are giving hackers an avenue to their personal information (Spiekermann and
Cranor, 2009). A person may conclude
therefore, that the only “problem” the internet permits concerning privacy is a
financial one. To these people, I
suggest we take another approach to the privacy issue.
Social media is, to many people, a major function of the
internet. They use it to stay connected
to people anywhere and everywhere. We
have seen numerous studies and reports that talk about the privacy issues and
concerns that social media brings and the adage that once something has been
posted on the internet, it’s always there.
Before concerns about privacy surfaced, people were posting very
personal information to their accounts.
Now it seems that consumers of social media are starting to apply the
suggested solutions to their accounts.
Almost simultaneously, companies that own social media platforms are
also trying to adjust privacy issues from their end as well (Spiekermann and
Cranor, 2009). Therefore, it would seem
that these sites are as private as they can be.
However, there is one variable that can’t really be accounted for: the
user.
Novices and children are very vulnerable to the internet and
all of its uses. Children are almost
required to use the internet for education purposes. Their personal information, grades,
assignments, readings and homework may be entirely online. This opens up another danger (other than
social media) to children and their families.
Parents and teachers may opt to download and recommend apps or web sites
that claim to help the students in their education, but these sites have not
been adequately vetted for privacy by the school (Singer, 2015). Many districts have already seen data
breaches of their systems (Singer, 2015).
Therefore, some schools are just now beginning to think about teaching a
privacy curriculum. This would teach
children about the dangers of the internet and the positive implications of
privacy (Egelman, Bernd, Friedland and Garcia, 2016). Should schools be teaching internet privacy
to their students? If so, where does the
school’s responsibility end and the parent’s responsibility begin?
References
Engelman, Serge, Bernd, Julia, Friedland, Gerald, Garcia, Dan. (2016).
The teaching privacy curriculum.
International Computer Science Institute.
Punagin, Saraswathi and Arya, Arti. (2015).
Privacy in the age of pervasive internet and big data analytics –
challenges and opportunities. I.J.
Modern Education and Computer Science, 7 (36-47).
Singer, Natasha.
(2015). Privacy pitfalls as
education apps spread haphazardly. The
New York Times. https://nyti.ms/1Ms03de
Spiekermann, Sarah and Cranor, Lorrie Faith. (2009).
Engineering privacy. IEEE
Transactions on Software Engineering, 35 (1).
Helena I think the questions you posed were good ones. I think instead of asking should schools start teaching internet privacy it should be changed to when should schools start teaching it? I say this because I teach it to 9th graders in my school but by then some of the kids have already had issues with internet security. Usually it has to do with social networking passwords but it is something they need to be aware of. The very first day the students pick up their laptops in my school we tell them to change their passwords and make sure that they change it to something other than Password. I proceed to go on to tell the students how dumb people can be by showing them this video.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opRMrEfAIiI
I completely agree with MrBrady here - we should absolutely be teaching students about privacy and security so the idea of when is probably the most important question. While privacy may not be an academic topic, I do think schools should focus on this some because it will impact a students future in their chosen profession or field. Additionally, there may be some students who don't have technology at home so they won't be able to get that necessary information. If they're using the technology in schools, then the schools need to be able help them use it in an appropriate manner.
ReplyDeleteI think of my nieces and nephews who already have devices and they haven't hit high school yet, so is high school too late?
" We have seen numerous studies and reports that talk about the privacy issues and concerns that social media brings and the adage that once something has been posted on the internet, it’s always there." Helena this quote of yours I think is most central to the problem our students face. I think there is a misconception that cyber-mistakes are easily forgotten and deleted, while it is quite the opposite in reality. Students who make terrible decisions on the web will have them followed by their mistakes almost certainly for the rest of their lives. Therefore I certainly think we need to be making a greater effort to educate our students on the potential dangers of both oversharing and the "real world" repercussions of getting into mischief online.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your comments.
ReplyDeleteThis is a serious issue, so I'm glad to see that there is an overall consensus in all three of the comments to my blog. Lacey and MrBrady explicitly stated that internet security and privacy not only should be taught in schools, but it should be taught early in a child's academic career. Jack Jones stated the same thing in a more implicit manner. He stated that there are dangers in oversharing on social media and due to this fact, we need to make sure students are aware of this before they start exploring social media. We all know that students are on social media long before high school. Therefore, we should start teaching students about internet privacy and security before they enter high school and most likely, before they enter middle school. Lacey, MrBrady, and Jack Jones all alluded to the fact that when a student begins using technology in school, that is when it is the school's responsibility to begin educating them about that technology. This includes the positives, the negatives and internet privacy and security that comes along with the technology they are using. I hope that these views are applied in schools because internet privacy and security can affect everyone at any point in their lives.
Thanks for reading and for sharing your views on this topic!!