Your Digital World
By Sophie
Sophie
Introduction
I have been researching several aspects of these questions, looking at things such as privacy, safety, rights and responsibilities, and here I will be presenting my findings.
Our Rights on the Internet
Humans rights describe things that all humans should be able to have. Several of these rights identified as relating to the internet, since the internet is, as much as anywhere else, a place where rights can be given and taken away. It's easy on the internet for someone to be deprived of their rights; you can sometimes be in far more danger of these things on the internet than you can in real life. These are the human rights that have been identified as relevant to the internet:
- Privacy- We have the right to protect our privacy, so that none of our information is placed online without our consent. This means that we have a right to privacy settings, and we must be taught how to use them properly. If information about ourselves gets online, we can be endangered, so this is one of the most important "internet rights" to respect.
- Protection and safety- This is similar to the above right. A right to privacy is a right to protection and safety. We have the right not to be endangered by the people we may encounter online.
- Ability to report threatening content and behavior- If we come across a site containing threatening, illegal or offensive content, we have the right to have an ability to report it. Mosts sites have a "report abuse" button; this can usually be found at the bottom of the page.
- Education- We have the right to educate ourselves on the internet.
Responsibilities on the Internet
The things listed above are things that we should expect on the internet. However, with every set of rights comes a set of responsibilities. You have the right to certain things; therefore, you also have a responsibility to do certain things. For example, with the right to freedom of speech comes the responsibility to use this speech carefully and not to hurt anyone. Since they are very closely linked to your rights, many of them are about protecting your rights. You have a right to be safe, but if you're not sensible about it, there's no chance you will be. This is the list that I have come up with, a mixture of information from different websites I have visited.
- Respect and protect yourself- I won't go into huge detail about this, since the rest of the flyer is largely about how to do it.
- Respect and protect others- If we want to be respected and protected, we have to do the same to others! Don't infringe anyone else's rights by refusing to accept them, by not protecting them, or by endangering them yourself.
- Report threatening content or behaviour- If you see this happening to someone else or yourself, there may seem plenty of good reasons just to let it be. However, if you don't tell anyone, the situation can only get worse. It won't be stopped if no-one makes a move to stop it, and no-one will make a move unless people know about it.
- Don't abuse your right to education- The internet can be very helpful to teenagers at school, but it also provides a large potential for cheating (e.g. copying and pasting) and lying. Right now, it may be the solution to a hard essay. But as we get older and our essays become more serious, they have equipment that can lead them to the source, even if several words are changed. This can cause a great deal of trouble, so it's much better just to avoid going down that route.
Using Social Network Safely and Responsibly
From looking around the different websites I have discovered, I've compiled a list of a few things we can do that will keep us safe online.
- Set strong passwords- I will be going into this shortly, but it is always necessary. The harm someone causes if they can get into your email or Facebook account, for example, is huge.
- Set ULRs- We always need to be careful when doing this- it's one thing many people forget to do, but it can lead to trouble.
- Don't click on links from people you don't know- you never know where they could lead. They might lead you, for instance, to a site that can put a virus onto your computer.
- Always use antivirus software- This is additional protection from what I have just warned you against.
- Keep your password private and lock your phone- If you set a strong, safe password nobody should be able to practise. The website I went on told you to "treat your password as you would your toothbrush". By this, it means that you shouldn't share it with anyone, however close- it's just a private thing. Even if you trust someone, it's simplest to keep it in your own head.
What To Avoid
There are several things we need to stay away from, on the internet, or we could get involved in trouble. These are the top five online crimes:
- Hacking
- Phishing
- Viruses and Malware
- Ratting
- Clickjacking
They can get people into serious trouble, just as they would if they broke the law in "real life". We need to avoid these crimes by keeping ourselves safe in the ways I have listed before. If we don't keep ourselves safe, there will be consequences- sometimes there consequences can be really serious. I am going to retell a true story found on one of the websites I looked up. It is a very extreme example, but it does tell us what happens when you don't stay away from what should be left alone, and everything spirals out of control.
Megan's Story
Megan was only thirteen, but she had already encountered several personal problems. She was battling ADD, and had been overweight. When she entered eighth grade, things had started to look slightly more positive. She had quarrelled with her best friend and no longer had her, but had met a boy called Josh on MySpace, who appeared to like her. But soon she began to suspect her ex-best friend (who she often bickered with) of spreading bad rumours to Josh about her. When he started saying bad things, she quickly spiralled into depression. Her parents tried to separate her from Josh and her ex-best friend, but she compulsively retaliated and checked her MySpace, which only fed the situation. As her fourteenth birthday approached, Megan became even more unstable; it was clear that because of what was being said on MySpace, no-one would come to her birthday party. On the afternoon before her birthday, her Mother, Tina, had to forcibly remove her from her MySpace account. She was becoming enraged over what was being said.
She was sent to her room, and it was discovered by Tina that she had killed herself there.
Privacy Settings
So how do we protect ourselves from these things? There are many ways we can keep ourselves safe. One of the top ones is to keep your profile secure. Many people don't know how to use the privacy settings, and don't realise that many people can see some of their private information. People need protecting from the consequences of these things. These are steps I have researched on line to make sure that our privacy settings are secure. In brief, they go like this:
- See your profile as others see it- The screenshot below illustrates that you can check what your profile looks like to certain people. This will show you if there's anything on here you might not want them to see, which you might not otherwise have noticed.
- Make sure you're browsing securely- You don't want everyone to see where you're browsing, so this another important privacy step.
- Limit access to yourself- Do you really want everyone to see your profile? If so, don't say anything about yourself that you wouldn't be comfortable with the whole world knowing.
- Tame your timelines and tags- If you don't keep an eye on these things, you might find them spiralling out of control.
- Keep your apps under control- This is an other thing that can easily get out of hand if you don't keep an eye on it.
- Opt out of facebook ads
Setting Strong Passwords
Legislation
Biometric Scanners
Encryption
Forensic Computing
The goal of forensic computing is to analyze digital media, "indentifying, preserving, recording and presenting facts and opinions about digital media". It is often involved in and used in computer crime and research. These are very technical ways to research internet crime. This shows that it is a very serious thing, with very serious consequences. It isn't just a low-key, easily sorted out affair. There can be large scale problems, courts and police investigations. These are certainly justified. In Megan's story, we have seen how these things can occasionally result in something as tragic as suicide.
Internet Addiction
I have listed many dangers on the internet that are publicly recognised as extremely dangerous things; we spend a large part of most school years learning about the dangers of cyber bullying and internet security. However, there are also several less-recognised dangers on the internet. We can fall victims to these, hardly even realising what's most dangerous happening. It's essential to know the symptoms of these things. Symptoms of one the most dangerous underrated risks online, internet addiction, include:
- Suffering from anxiety- It's hard to be calm and in control of your life when you're always being sucked into to the screen that just magnifies stress.
- Being depressed- With stress and anxiety comes the conviction that nothing is going to come right, and this can easily lead to depression in a downward spiral.
- Lacking social support- Often people can feel half-ashamed of their internet usage, and would feel defensive about it, assuming other people would want to stop them. They might be led to try to escape people and the support they could offer.
- Being an unhappy teenager- It would be very hard, with what I've listed (anxiety, stress, loneliness) to be a happy, content teenager.
- Running out of time online- This is something it's easy to do! But if you never have enough time online, it suggests that it's the amount you require that is the problem- you can never get enough.
- Seperation from family and friends
- Feeling guilty about your internet use
Teenagers On Social Media Survey
I had done my online research, but I wanted to do a different type. I could always have searched up survey results online, but what was even more reliable was to include a real life survey of teenagers on total media. Our class had been set the homework to request seven people to complete a survey, asking seven teenagers they knew the set questions on social media. There were only 104 total results, which was fewer than they should have been, but still a useful overview of how teenagers use media.
First of all, 52% of the results were female, 48% male. This doesn't tell us much, but is useful to take into consideration when studying the results.
94% of these people used social media; 6% didn't. This shows that an overhwelming majority of teenagers do use these websites. This makes it an issue we certainly need to focus on, if it affects this many people. It's not just a few of us: it's almost all of us.
Predictably, more people were on Facebook than any other media: 62% of the people surveyed. This means that this website needs more attention than the rest. It's very popular-- if it was dangerous, a huge number of teenagers would be put at risk.
46% used Google+; 45% used Instagram; 40% used Snapchat; 37% used YouTube. These are certainly the most popular websites for social media. Other top websites include Twitter, Hangouts, Pinterest and WhatsApp. There are a number of smaller, less-used ones as well.
Most people used it everyday. This is another thing that shows us how important this issue is: almost 94% of teenagers use it as a part of their daily life.
82% of people said that their parents used it. 18% said that they didn't. This is good, meaning it's more likely that any bad experiance they had could be sorted out by the parents. However, it is a pity that not all of the parents know about it.
88% of people know (or think they know) how to use the privacy settings. This is good, but again, it should be 100%, since it's dangerous not to. For example, when I was creating a Goodreads profile, I only realised afterwards that it had automatically clicked "show email to friends". Since I didn't know the "friends" in real life, I certainly wouldn't want this. We need to be more aware of this type of thing.
39% of people had friended people they don't know. I think that this okay, so long as they don't give out a huge amount of personal information, which could get dangerous.
22% of people said that they have had bad experiances: this is that we need to change, and that is the objective of this flyer.