Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying and Internet Safety, oh my.

            Digital citizenship. To me, digital citizenship is using the internet responsibly. Both personally and professionally, that means I need to be careful about what I put on the internet. I've been using the internet and social media regularly since seventh grade. There are almost definitely some things that I posted on social media that I would be embarrassed by. The older I get, the more I’ve realized that everything is on the internet forever, so I try to not post things that could paint me in a negative light.

            Going off of that, cyber bullying is a huge issue with social media and the internet. Anyone can say anything they want about anyone, whether it be on Facebook, ask.fm, tumblr, etc. It can be anonymous, or your name can be attached to it. I’ve gotten into my fair share of “fights” with people on Facebook. The people that were then my friends and myself, hurling insults back and forth through both comments on statuses and personal messages. This hasn’t happened in many years because as I said previously, I don’t like to cast myself in a negative light, and saying mean things to people on a public forum definitely doesn’t make me look like the good person I know I am. In addition to that, the older I’ve gotten, the less things that I used to fight about with people seem to matter, and aren’t something I would even spend any time dwelling on the way I did then. But when my “Facebook fights” were happening, I was in high school. They were the thing that mattered to me then. I was fifteen years old, and didn’t understand the consequences of my actions and words the way I do now, four years later with a lot more experience with the internet. Now, I use social media in a positive way, the way I think it should be used by everyone.

            Keeping that in mind, I understand why adults would have concerns about internet safety for both themselves and their children. If anyone can do or say anything they want on the internet, why would someone want to take the risk of actively using it? I have some concerns about internet safety myself. I recently made every social media I have private (except for twitter, so everyone in Ed Tech can see my tweets about my blog posts). However, this type of attitude, that the internet can be evil place, is holding everyone back. The internet can be a safe place if you follow “the rules" and use it responsibly. A webpage we read this week, Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship, outlined the nine main points of being safe on the internet and using the internet well. As long as you follow those, internet safety can be achieved. If someone just avoids the internet out of fear and ignorance, they’re missing out of all the wonderful knowledge the internet holds, and are depriving the world of their possible contribution.