BERLIN – School officials are hoping an outreach program will create a dialogue about Internet safety.
On Wednesday, Stephen Decatur Middle School (SDMS) parents and students, as well as educators and elected officials, assembled for a presentation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on how to protect children from negative and criminal online activity.
Topics included social networking, cyber bullying and Internet predators, among others.
Vince DeVivo, a community outreach specialist with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Maryland, said the purpose of the presentation is to start a conversation on how to keep children safe on the Internet.
“Our goal here is to educate and empower parents because parents are really a gateway for our kids to get online,” he said. “They are buying the devices and they are providing the airtime.”
DeVivo, who travels to schools throughout Maryland, said the outreach program is designed to make parents and children more aware of the technology they are using.
“The issues are the same everywhere,” he said. “Unless we learn to be more critical consumers of it, we are going to have problems all the time.”
Lynne Barton, SDMS principal, said the school decided to have DeVivo give a presentation to parents and students after hearing him speak at a safety conference over the summer.
“We thought it would be such a valuable presentation,” she said.
Barton explained that the presentation would give attendees the opportunity to learn about dangerous Internet activity.
“There is so much children don’t understand about the Internet,” she said. “There are so many parents, including teachers and principals, that don’t understand and will never catch up to what goes on. He really talks a lot about different aspects and information and what’s really out there.”
DeVivo said tech users are often lured into a false sense of security on the Internet.
“We have a lot of false beliefs about the Internet, that it does provide privacy, that it really deletes things,” he said. “That is where we run into a lot of problems.”
By educating the community of the dangers lurking on the Internet, DeVivo said he hopes parents would be more aware of the role they play in their child’s safety.
DeVivo offers parents what he called “mechanical” and “biological” solutions to dangerous online activity.
“The mechanical solutions are the controls, which there are more all the time,” he said, “and the biological solutions are the types of conversations that we have with kids.”
DeVivo urged parents to take control of technology.
“Will we control technology or will technology control us?” he said. “I’m about to show you we are losing, we are losing badly, and our worst victims stand to be our children if we don’t make fundamental changes.”
DeVivo said younger generations of students who use the Internet are at the greatest risk for cyber bullying, identity theft, gang influence and other illegal activities.
“No previous generation in the history of the world has ever had so much information thrown at them at such a high rate of speed and they cannot handle it because none of us do,” he said. “Picture our youngest kids at the base of the Niagara Falls of data and we’re telling them to catch it all.”
In addition to providing safety tips, DeVivo offered attendees several resources that will allow parents to control and filter content.
“What I hope to do is to equip and empower you to work on this issue,” he said.
