Teachers and local RCMP want students and parents to learn important lessons about online safety as students go back to school.
Holy Trinity Academy hosted online security expert Paul Davis Monday evening to meet with parents about safe social media practices, as well as cyber bullying, texting and protecting privacy on handheld devices.
HTA principal Carmen Ostafichuk said they want parents and students to be responsible and safe when using social media.
“This is a topic kids need to be smart with,” she said.
Ostafichuk said things can change quickly with online and mobile technologies.
She said they want to help parents understand social media, the differences between different services like Facebook or Snapchat and how people can protect themselves.
Ostafichuk said students have become smarter and more savvy as technology has developed and evolved, but she hasn’t seen many incidents at the school.
“There’s always some cases, but for the most part the kids are pretty smart with their phones,” she said.
In some cases, she said it makes it easier to deal with situations that may emerge because there is a clear record.
“It removes the he said, she said because it’s right in front of you,” she said.
Police are also asking parents to be aware of their children’s online activity and urge young people to take steps to protect themselves online.
Okotoks RCMP Sgt. Sukh Randhawa said it’s an issue parents and schools need to take to heart now that school is back.
“We’re seeing a rise in terms of some young people, especially teens, who are sharing information, pictures on social media,” he said. “You never know who is receiving the information on the other side.”
RCMP urge people to put safety and privacy first on social media, starting by considering all the ins and outs of how a particular service operates and what is made public before joining.
Tips include restricting access to people you know, not posting a full name or other information that could lead people to identify you offline, posting information you are comfortable with other people seeing, not posting photos of younger siblings and being wary of people met online.
Police say four major dangers include over-sharing information, people pretending to be someone they are not, services that allow others to see your location and posting photos.
Police recommend three simple steps on social media - not filling out optional information when signing up, setting the highest level of security and only accepting people you know as friends.
Randhawa said parents can’t sit on the sidelines and need to have frank discussions with their children about social media. That means asking difficult questions, such as what they are sharing on social media and who their online friends are, he said.
Randhawa said everyone needs to think about what they are sharing.
“Just be careful about what you put online,” he said.
Randhawa said RCMP deal with a range of different incidents and reports involving social media and technology.
“I would say they are frequent, not few and far between,” he said.
According to Randhawa, police deal with more cases of people sharing photos than instances of identity theft. He said cases have involved males and females and ages typically range from 13-years-old to people in their early 20s.
Randhawa said people should not be sharing intimate photos because it could lead to criminal charges. Changes to the criminal code in recent years make it illegal to share intimate images of an individual without their consent.
