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How can educational institutes build online safety for students?

The online safety bill has raised questions about the importance and impact of technology on improving online safety for students.

As students and teachers increasingly rely on technology inside and outside of the classroom, the issue of online safety for students has been hotly debated. The Online Safety Bill continues to be a topic of discussion and has raised questions about the importance and impact of technology in the education sector.

The Internet is an essential resource for information, contributing to the development of the education sector. Whether it’s for sharing study material, accessing course tutorials, gathering knowledge on specific topics, or setting up virtual learning opportunities, the Internet plays a critical role in modern education. So, it’s also crucial to understand the potential risks of exposing children and youth to such advanced technology.

We spoke with Mat Pullen, a senior education expert at Jamf, about the risks involving technology in the education sector and how to ensure young people’s online safety. This generation of children is Internet savvy, so why are they not safe online?

A lack of awareness of the dangers present online

The current generation of children has a natural affinity towards technology and the Internet. Smart devices and high-speed Internet are ubiquitous, and young people tend to be incredibly tech-savvy. However, this familiarity with technology can also lead to complacency and a lack of awareness of the dangers present online.

While these children are confident in their abilities and understanding of technology, they may not be aware of the potential risks and dangers that exist in the digital world. Without proper guidance and safeguards in place, it is easy for them to stumble upon harmful content, such as violence or sexual material, which can have a significant impact on their development and well-being.

Furthermore, recent research has shown that one in ten teachers is confident that their students are safe online, highlighting a critical need for more education and awareness around online safety for students. Children may also be at risk of grooming or other inappropriate contacts, as well as cyber threats such as malware and phishing attacks.

It is crucial for parents, teachers, and guardians to take an active role in educating and protecting children online. This can include setting parental controls, having open and honest conversations about online safety, and monitoring children’s online activity. By doing so, we can help ensure that this generation of children can continue to enjoy the benefits of technology while also staying safe and protected online.

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Is the Online Safety Bill going in the right direction regarding child online safety?

I wholeheartedly agree that the Online Safety Bill is an essential step in the right direction. It acknowledges the growing concern around online safety and takes action to create legal responsibility for online platforms to address harmful content. By doing so, this bill will help protect vulnerable individuals and ensure that online platforms take their responsibilities seriously.

However, it’s important to note that the bill is not a panacea for all online safety issues. Like the EU GDPR laws, it sets the legal framework for companies to protect personal information, but the existence of the law doesn’t guarantee compliance. Similarly, the Online Safety Bill needs to be effectively implemented to ensure that its provisions are enforced and online platforms take responsibility for harmful content.

Recent research revealing that a significant number of teachers feel that the Online Safety Bill needs to do more to protect students reinforces the idea that the bill is just one part of the solution. Teachers and parents require more support to ensure young people stay safe online, including guidance on how to identify and address online risks and how to leverage technology to create a safe environment for children to explore and learn.

Moreover, technology plays a crucial role in creating a secure online experience in education. By implementing content filtering and other measures, it is possible to create a safe space where students can explore and develop in a secure environment. This, coupled with the right guidance and support from teachers, can go a long way in keeping children safe online.

But it’s important not to rely on technology alone. Educating children on how to identify and address online risks and the importance of online safety is essential to ensure their protection. The government can provide resources to teachers, lecturers, and parents to learn more about online risks and how to mitigate them.

The Online Safety Bill is an essential step in the right direction towards creating a safer online environment. However, it’s only one part of the solution, and more needs to be done to ensure that young people are safe online. By providing guidance, support, and education and leveraging technology, we can create a safer online environment for the current and future generations.

How can technology be used to build online safety for students and support parents and teachers?

To expand on the use of filtering technology, it is essential to note that there are different types of filters that schools and parents can utilise. One is a content filter, which restricts access to inappropriate websites and content based on keywords or categories such as violence, nudity, or gambling. Another is a time filter, which limits the amount of time a student can spend on the internet each day or blocks access during certain times, such as during school hours or late at night.

Another way technology can be used to support online safety is through parental control apps. These apps allow parents to monitor their online activity, block access to certain apps or websites, and set time limits. This gives parents greater control over what their children are exposed to online and allows them to have more informed conversations about online safety.

For teachers, there are also a variety of online resources available to help them educate their students on online safety. Many organisations provide lesson plans, activities, and workshops that teachers can use to teach their students about online safety and responsible internet use. In addition, there are online training courses available for teachers who want to improve their own understanding of new technologies and online safety best practices.

Finally, it is important to emphasise that technology should not be the only solution for online safety for students. Parents and teachers should also have open and honest conversations with children about online safety and teach them how to recognise and respond to online threats. Children need to understand that the online world can be dangerous, just like the real world, and they need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to protect themselves. By combining technology with education, parents and teachers can provide a comprehensive approach to online safety for children.

How can schools implement an effective ed tech strategy to transform the learning experience for children?

To implement an effective ed tech strategy in schools, it is essential to provide teachers and parents with the necessary resources and knowledge to understand and effectively use technology. The Online Safety Bill is a positive step towards creating a safer online environment for children, but it is crucial to ensure that all education providers are aware of it. It is worrying to see that a significant proportion of teachers do not feel equipped to predict the effectiveness of the Online Safety Bill.

Flexibility and freedom are key benefits of technology in the learning process, especially in the wake of the pandemic and teacher strikes . As students have had to take greater responsibility for their own learning, technology has played a crucial role in enabling them to continue their education independently. Personalised learning approaches that best suit each student’s learning style can enhance engagement and motivation, and combining this with structured learning will benefit students even more.

Consistency is also vital in ensuring that students’ technological experiences are cohesive and effective throughout their educational journey. A disjointed experience can occur when students move from one stage to another, and it is important to ensure that all stages are blended seamlessly to create a cohesive learning experience. It is essential for teachers to understand that technology is a tool to support learning and should be used as such. Teachers should plan their lessons and use technology to enhance and engage students’ learning experience.

To implement an effective ed tech strategy, schools should invest in professional development opportunities for teachers and provide ongoing support for their use of technology in the classroom. It is also crucial to ensure that students are educated on how to use technology responsibly and safely. Schools can work with parents to provide guidance and resources on how to monitor their children’s online activities and keep them safe.

Technology has the potential to transform the learning experience for children, but it is crucial to ensure that it is used safely and effectively. With proper support and education, technology can provide a personalised and engaging learning experience that benefits students in all stages of their educational journey.

This piece was written and provided by Mat Pullen, Senior Education Expert at Jamf .

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Getting Kids to Take Online Safety Seriously

When you ask students to think through their own scenarios about online safety, they’re more likely to look out for themselves and others.

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The top-line statistics about online safety for kids are troubling: According to a 2019 study by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, 40 percent of kids in grades 4-8 reported that they connected or chatted online with a stranger. Meanwhile, the Journal of Adolescent Health reports that approximately one in five youth experience unwanted online exposure to sexually explicit material. And the risks just come from strangers: Pew Research Center reports that 59 percent of kids have been bullied or harassed online.

ISTE standards for students don’t quite seem up to the task. While they touch on cyberbullying and data privacy and acknowledge that being a “digital citizen” means learning about the responsibilities and behaviors for interacting in this space, they don’t say a word about access to and sharing of inappropriate and explicit content—including the risk of kids making a naive but devastating misstep themselves.

That’s a big gap. The easy solution would be cut-to-the-chase lectures that treat cyber safety as a standalone topic, but lectures often fail to make meaningful connections with students. In our years of teaching cyber safety to kids, we’ve arrived at what we think is a better approach—one in which cyber safety instruction is woven into subjects such as language arts, social studies, math, PE, and electives like STEAM, health, or theater.

We’ve seen it again and again in our classes: When cyber safety is contextualized and personalized and provides students with an opportunity to create, apply, or synthesize higher-level ideas in their subject-specific areas, the learning is far more profound. Moreover, with a cross-curricular approach, students become more empowered digital citizens who want to share their stories, research the facts, and inform their peers.

Make use of compelling, relevant narratives

Narrative is relevant in most subjects, but we’ve discovered that in the context of ELA, sharing cyber safety narratives with an element of suspense gains students’ attention, gets them thinking critically, and gives them ideas for their own narratives. Start with short, narrative videos such as those from Storybooth , a site that animates real-life stories submitted by 7th-12th graders, including testimonies relevant to cyber safety. BrainPop , which is aimed at elementary teachers and students, also has cyber safety videos.

After watching a video, ask your students to pick a related prompt. For example, if you’ve just watched a video on private and personal information, offer these:

  • Explain why it can be risky to share information online.
  • What steps would you take to prevent your private information from being shared?
  • Create a T-chart of safe and unsafe information to share online.

Then they can write a response to the prompt and then turn and talk to a peer or share their responses in a whole group, e.g., “This reminds me of…” or “I wonder what would happen if…”

Or have your students write real or imagined narratives around topics of cyber safety. Start with story prompts such as, “A friend tells you that they are planning to meet up with someone they met through social media and wants you to come along. How do you respond?”

We have students work collaboratively on different story prompts related to cyber safety, then use a jigsaw approach where each group rotates to a completed story prompt with sticky notes to ask questions, share “a-ha” moments, and give peers feedback.

Storytelling with avatars and comics

Comics can both inspire and educate kids . Consider having your students create virtual avatars and comic strips with a tool like Pixton . They can create representations of themselves, classmates, peers, family members, or teachers who will play a role in the narratives they create (with permission, of course, from the represented people—yet another opportunity to model consideration and consent).

For example, kids could envision a scenario in which a high schooler meets someone they think is a peer online, agrees to meet them in person, realizes the gravity of the situation, and flees, and then depict that entire storyline in a comic strip format. The same thing can be done with scenarios related to sharing photos or a bank account number.

With digital comics, students can change backgrounds to build settings, vary facial expressions and body posture of their avatars, and learn technical skills like camera zoom to edit. Digital comics can launch discussions about other important topics, too, like the importance of nonverbal communication and how to support their peers when warning signs of cyber safety arise.

Practice problem-solving with scenarios

When students act out scenarios, they explore possible solutions to complicated problems with their peers. Pose scenarios and ask cooperative groups to act them out. Here's an example:

A group of classmates asks for your help to create a website about a teacher at your school. They want to include inappropriate pictures, images, and comments about her. What do you do? 

With practice and trust, your students will likely want to write their own scenarios. Whether you teach health, theater, or creative writing, having kids write a script for a cyber safety situation can bring new energy into your classroom.

Integrate research

When students research facts about cyber safety issues, they build their critical thinking and media literacy skills and gain a clearer understanding of what cyber safety is and what affects it, both in terms of outside influences and their own behavior.

For example, in a social studies class, ask them to consider this scenario: “Your friend tags you in a picture at the beach on Instagram. Other users have begun to make comments that make you feel uncomfortable and don’t seem appropriate to post online. You’re worried that your mom will see it. What should you do?”

As part of the assignment, have students look at legislation related to cyber safety to understand the legal ramifications of bad (and sometimes illegal) behavior; advise them to add links and resources they’ve discovered. Using an online collaboration board such as Padlet, Jamboard, or with Nearpod or Pear Deck, you can also do “think-pair-share” activities rooted in online research.

Relevant research works in math, too, and the objectivity of numbers provides a nice counterbalance to personal narratives. A good infographic, for example, can prompt questions and robust discussion. Because infographics are data-rich, they can reinforce understanding of statistics and probability and help develop quantitative literacy.

Students can also create surveys using Google Forms and collect data from their peers about a cyber safety topic of their choice—they are often more interested in crunching numbers when working with a data set they’ve created or contributed to and care about. Once students have collected and analyzed their data, they can create a Canva infographic of their own, which can also be used for a “notice and wonder” conversation that they lead.

Cyber safety instruction helps students see the connections between good citizenship overall and digital citizenship . Students need to understand the facts, cause and effect, personal responsibility, and the importance of both etiquette and context. Most of all, they need to understand that the lessons of compassion they learn throughout their school years extend into the digital world. One of the best ways to be compassionate towards others (and themselves!) is to be safe online. 

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  • Our world is increasingly reliant on digital connectivity for education, business and services.
  • The urgency to ensure a safe online environment has never been greater.
  • The World Economic Forum's Global Coalition for Digital Safety is a multistakeholder initiative leading the charge in fostering global collaboration for enhanced digital safety.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, understanding and tackling digital threats and harms is crucial. The comprehensive 2023 Global Online Safety Survey by Microsoft, which surveyed over 16,000 individuals across 16 countries, revealed a startling fact: 69% of respondents experienced online risks in the past year. This significant statistic underscores the widespread nature of digital dangers such as misinformation, disinformation, cyberbullying, hate speech, and threats of violence, highlighting the importance of addressing these global challenges.

The impact of delivering digital safety.

Recognizing the critical nature of these threats , the World Economic Forum launched the Global Coalition for Digital Safety . This important move signals a decisive step towards enhancing digital safety on a global scale.

The Coalition is leading the charge in fostering global collaboration for enhanced digital safety. This multistakeholder initiative includes tech giants such as Meta , Amazon , TikTok , and Google ; eSafety company Activefence ; the Digital Trust & Safety Partnerships ; the governments of Belgium and Singapore; regulators in the UK and Australia ; universities such as Oxford and Stanford ; and UN agencies like UNICEF and UNOCT .

The Coalition is assisting companies, policymakers, experts, and civil society by developing practical frameworks, toolkits, and resources to create a safer digital ecosystem. It is a dynamic response to the escalating challenges of terrorist and violent content, exploitation of children, cyberbullying, harassment, hate speech, misinformation, and the emerging complexities introduced by technologies like the metaverse and generative AI. Central to its mission is the balance of respecting fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, privacy, and safety.

To address the many complexities of digital safety, the Coalition has been developing a cohesive suite of resources that, when combined, form a comprehensive toolkit. This strategic approach ensures that each output integrates with others to offer a holistic resource pool. Each report and tool is designed is collaboration with all stakeholders to build upon and supplement the others to form a complete, globally useful set of resources for advancing safety and reducing harms online. They aim to help policy-makers, industry leaders, civil society organizations, researchers and individuals to address the issue of harmful content online comprehensively and in a rights-respecting manner.

Our initial focus has been on developing Global Principles , which are instrumental in advancing digital safety while firmly respecting human rights. Far from being mere theoretical guidelines, these foundational principles have fostered a strong commitment across multiple sectors, empowering stakeholders to implement practical strategies for enhancing digital safety within their organizations and communities.

The Coalition's efforts are focused on creating a shared understanding of digital harms to harmonize universal perspectives on them. This approach has been crucial in clearly defining and discussing these issues. Establishing this common framework and foundational language has been essential for enabling coordinated and effective action among various stakeholders. Importantly, this framework is designed to be flexible, allowing it to adapt and remain relevant in the ever-changing digital landscape.

Have you read?

Digital safety: how a multi-faceted approach can help tackle real-world harm, world mental health day: how to safeguard children's mental wellbeing in the digital era, the global vs. local dilemma: crafting cross-border solutions for online safety.

The Coalition's approach to handling digital safety risks is a clear indication of its dedication to creating real-world change. By providing a systematic method for dealing with the complexities of digital safety , the Coalition has addressed a vital need for standards and guidance. Emphasizing a variety of case studies and actual experiences, the Coalition has unified a broad range of perspectives, improving how companies and individuals understand and manage digital safety risks.

What’s next?

Moving forward, the Global Coalition for Digital Safety will be focusing on three key areas. First, we are defining clear, measurable parameters that will allow us to track the real impact of our digital safety efforts. The objective is to build solid evidence to show what is working, ensuring every step taken is informed and effective.

Second, the Coalition is preparing a map of effective intervention for digital safety, draw on safety-by-design principles and best practices to provide a resource to assist companies in effectively identifying and reducing digital risks, preventing harm and promoting trust and safety.

Third, we is ramping up efforts to improve how we share information and boost media information literacy. In an age where disinformation can spread like wildfire, it is critical that everyone has the skills to separate fact from fiction online. Through education and outreach, we aim to empower people and organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to navigate the digital landscape safely and confidently. The complexity and scale of the disinformation and misinformation crisis necessitate a whole-of-society approach. Countering false information is not solely responsibility of individuals, platforms or regulators but requires the concerted effort of all sectors of society.

We are committed to making the digital world a safer place for everyone.

We are calling on passionate individuals, organizations, and leaders across industries to join the Coalition. If you share our vision of a digital environment that is safe, respectful, and enriching, and you are ready to help make a tangible difference, get involved to turn this vision into reality.

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The Global Alliance is creating a safe media ecosystem

November 26, 2019

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What is Online Safety?

Within this article, we explore what online safety is and why it’s more important now than it has ever been.

So what is ‘Online Safety’?

In simple terms, online safety refers to the act of staying safe online. It is also commonly known as internet safety, e-safety and cyber safety. It encompasses all technological devices which have access to the internet from PCs and laptops to smartphones and tablets.

Being safe online means individuals are protecting themselves and others from online harms and risks which may jeopardise their personal information, lead to unsafe communications or even effect their mental health and wellbeing.

Operating within an online space is something most of us simply do subconsciously, but have you ever stopped to consider the potential dangers which exist on the web, especially for our children?

The recent Ofcom ‘Children and Parents: media use and attitudes report 2019’ report released last week found that children are more engaged online than they’ve ever been. Ownership of smart devices is increasing and the range of content they are viewing is expanding.

In an ever-changing world, ensuring pupils’ safety online has never been more important. It’s an all-encompassing duty and something every teacher must be vigilant of.

What are the risks?

It goes without saying that the internet can be an unforgiving place. Aside from the more obvious risks such as online bullying, grooming or device addiction , the way children are engaging with the online world means that we have to take stock of their mental health and wellbeing, the type of content they are viewing and what they are posting online.

This includes the heightened concern around fake news and what impact social media influencers may be having on our children’s behaviour. It also includes the ongoing debate as to whether online gaming and certain features of online gaming, such as loot boxes and skins , are categorised as gambling and are encouraging gambling habits in children.

The number of varying social media applications continues to grow too. Previously, if you educated yourself on the mechanics of Facebook , Snapchat and Instagram , you’d pretty much be covered.

However, we’re now in an age where a multitude of ‘apps’ exist, and they’re more complex than ever before. Whilst the above remain popular, how many of us have heard of TikTok , YOLO, FaceApp or LIKEE . All of these are all free to download and available at the touch of a button.

Such are the range of risks we now need to be aware of and the different platforms that children can access, it’s not easy to keep up to date.

What does policy say?

The ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ statutory guidance is an important document which outlines school’s responsibilities in relation to safeguarding children online. The key aspect of the report states that:

“An effective approach to online safety empowers a school or college to protect and educate the whole school or college community in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any incident where appropriate.”

School also need to be aware of the ‘Relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education’ statutory guidance. Due to become mandatory for all schools this September, it provides the core requirements that both primary and secondary schools need to consider around teaching students about the range of online risks and harms.

The above guidance should be read in consultation with the ‘Teaching Online Safety in Schools’ guidance. This was published to help support schools in teaching pupils how to stay safe online when studying new and existing subjects. The guidance was produced alongside the UKCCIS ‘Education for a Connected Framework’ which breaks down content in age appropriate categories.

What can schools do?

From the above it might seem like educating yourself, your school and your students in staying safe online is a tall order. There is so much to consider in relation to meeting your DfE requirements, so many risks to be aware of and so many apps to keep on top of as children discover new platforms every week.

That’s where we come in.

At National Online Safety , we make it our mission to make the internet a safer place for children. We give school staff, parents and children the knowledge they need to understand online dangers, all in one place. Our Membership helps schools to meet their statutory obligations whist also educating the whole school community in online safety. Not only that, but it also gives schools full access to our globally recognised #WakeUpWednesday guides on the latest platforms, games and online risks.

We have a suite of online safety lesson plans to support schools, which cover a wide range of topics from Early Years through to Key Stage 4.

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Protecting children online, every child must be protected from violence, exploitation and abuse on the internet..

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Children are spending more time online than ever before. And they’re getting there sooner. Around the world, a child goes online for the first time every half second.

Growing up online offers limitless opportunities. Through computers, smartphones, gaming consoles, and televisions, children learn, imagine and develop their social networks. When used in the right way – and accessible to all – the internet has the potential to broaden horizons and ignite creativity the world over.

But with these opportunities come serious risks.

Cyberbullying and other forms of peer-to-peer violence can affect young people each time they log in to social media or instant messaging platforms. When browsing the internet, children may be exposed to hate speech and violent content – including messages that incite self-harm and even suicide.

Children can also be put at risk when tech companies breach their privacy to collect data for marketing purposes. Child-targeted marketing through apps – and the excessive screen time it often results in – can compromise a child’s healthy development.

More than a third of young people in 30 countries report being cyberbullied, with 1 in 5 skipping school because of it.

Most alarming is the threat of online sexual exploitation and abuse . It has never been easier for child sex offenders to contact their potential victims, share imagery and encourage others to commit offences. Children may be victimized through the production, distribution and consumption of sexual abuse material, or they may be groomed for sexual exploitation, with abusers attempting to meet them in person or exhort them for explicit content.

In the digital world, any person from any location can create and store sexually exploitative content. Child sex offenders may even livestream sexual abuse from the confines of their homes, directing on-demand abuse of children far away.

Some 80% of children in 25 countries report feeling in danger of sexual abuse or exploitation online.

As children embrace more digital platforms, they too may self-generate sexually explicit imagery. And though these images might be intended for an age-appropriate relationship, they can end up widely shared without consent. Sometimes, trusted adults solicit children to share imagery. For a child victim, this may result in social isolation, mental health issues, substance abuse, self-harm or suicide, as well as an increased likelihood of exhibiting abusive behaviours themselves in adulthood.

UNICEF’s response

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What happens online reflects the realities children face every day – at home, at school and in their wider communities.

Strategies to promote online safety must protect the educational and health benefits of digital technologies, while addressing the risks of exposure to violence, exploitation, and abuse, as well as to privacy breaches.

UNICEF works to make the internet a safe place for children to learn, socialize and express themselves. We partner with governments to advocate for necessary regulation, and with tech companies to promote the use of acceptable safety measures on their platforms. We also support ministries of education to teach children digital-literacy and online-safety skills.

Through our Global Kids Online   and Disrupting Harm projects, we gather evidence on children’s digital rights, opportunities and risks to better understand how use of digital technology contributes to their lives – and when it amplifies their risk of harm.

How does UNICEF address the online sexual exploitation of children?

UNICEF prevents and responds to the online sexual exploitation of children at the country and global level. We support coordinated national responses to online child sexual exploitation in over 20 countries – using the WePROTECT Global Alliance model – and strengthen the capacity of on-the-ground responders to provide services to victims. We work closely with governments to guide investments in evidence-based preventive programmes and awareness-raising. And we collaborate with tech companies to make digital products safer for children, providing industry guidelines and developing cutting-edge tools to stop the circulation of child sexual abuse materials.

More from UNICEF

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Growing concern for well-being of children and young people amid soaring screen time

Cyberbullying: What is it and how to stop it

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DR Congo: Children killed, injured, abducted, and face sexual violence in conflict at record levels for third consecutive year – UNICEF

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Ending online child sexual exploitation and abuse , addressing technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse in the face of covid 19  , covid-19 and its implications for protecting children online: a technical note from unicef and partners, the state of the world’s children, 2017: children in a digital world, perils and possibilities: growing up online, guidelines for industry on online child protection  , advocacy brief: child online protection, weprotect global alliance: intelligence brief impact of covid-19 on online child sexual exploitation, weprotect global alliance: global threat assessment, 2019 – working together to end the sexual exploitation of children online, weprotect global alliance: preventing and tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse – a model national response, weprotect global alliance: working examples of model national response capabilities and implementation, global kids online, disrupting harm, online course: action to end child sexual exploitation and abuse, legislating for the digital age: global guide on improving legislative frameworks to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse framing the future: how the model national response framework is supporting national efforts to end child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

Last updated 23 June 2022

Four Essays Addressing Risky Behaviors and Online Safety

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  From danah boyd's blog :

At Harvard’s Berkman Center, John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and I have been co-directing the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative to investigate the role that policy can play in addressing core issues involving youth and media. John has been leading up the Privacy, Publicity, and Reputation track; Urs has been managing Youth Created Content and Information Quality track; and I have been coordinating the Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track. We’ll have a lot of different pieces coming out over the next few months that stem from this work. Today, I’m pleased to share four important essays that emerged from the work we’ve been doing in the Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track: “Moving Beyond One Size Fits All With Digital Citizenship” by Matt Levinson and Deb Socia This essay addresses some of the challenges that educators face when trying to address online safety and digital citizenship in the classroom. “Evaluating Online Safety Programs” by Tobit Emmens and Andy Phippen This essay talks about the importance of evaluating interventions that are implemented so as to not face dangerous unintended consequences, using work in suicide prevention as a backdrop. “The Future of Internet Safety Education: Critical Lessons from Four Decades of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention” by Lisa M. Jones This essay contextualizes contemporary internet safety programs in light of work done in the drug abuse prevention domain to highlight best practices to implementing interventions. “Online Safety: Why Research is Important” by David Finkelhor, Janis Wolak, and Kimberly J. Mitchell This essay examines the role that research can and should play in shaping policy.

These four essays provide crucial background information for understanding the challenges of implementing education and public health interventions in the area of online safety. I hope you will read them because they are truly mind-expanding pieces.

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Essay on Internet Safety

Students are often asked to write an essay on Internet Safety in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Internet Safety

Understanding internet safety.

Internet safety means being secure online. When we use the internet, we should be careful, just like when crossing the road. It’s important to keep personal information private, like your full name, address, and school.

Creating Strong Passwords

A strong password is like a secure lock. It keeps your online information safe. Use a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. Don’t use easy words like your pet’s name because others might guess it.

Avoiding Strangers Online

On the internet, not everyone is friendly. Some people pretend to be someone else. Never meet up with someone you met online without a trusted adult.

Safe Sharing

Think before you post photos or share your location. Ask yourself if it’s something you’d want everyone to see. Once it’s online, it’s hard to take it back.

Asking for Help

If something online makes you uncomfortable, tell a grown-up you trust. They can help you. Remember, it’s always okay to ask for help if you’re unsure about anything online.

250 Words Essay on Internet Safety

What is internet safety.

Internet safety is about being secure online. When we go online, we can talk to friends, play games, and learn new things. But just like we look both ways before crossing the street, we need to be careful on the internet too.

Keeping Personal Information Private

Imagine your personal information is like a secret treasure. You wouldn’t want strangers to find it. Online, don’t share your full name, address, phone number, or school name with people you don’t know. It’s like giving them a map to your treasure.

Strong Passwords

A strong password is like a locked door to your online house. Use a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols to make it hard for others to guess. Don’t use easy passwords like “1234” or “password,” and never share your passwords with anyone except your parents.

Being Kind Online

The internet is a place where you can meet people from all over the world. Always be kind and respectful, just like you would be in person. If someone is mean to you, tell an adult you trust.

Staying Away from Strangers

If a stranger tries to talk to you online, don’t answer them. Tell a parent or teacher right away. Just like in the real world, not everyone online is a friend.

Staying safe on the internet is important. Keep your personal information a secret, use strong passwords, be kind, and stay away from strangers. Remember to talk to an adult if anything online makes you feel uncomfortable or scared.

500 Words Essay on Internet Safety

Internet safety is about being protected online. When we use the internet, we share information about ourselves, sometimes without knowing it. It’s like leaving the door to your house open; if you’re not careful, someone you don’t want inside might come in. So, it’s important to keep that door closed and locked by being smart about how we act on the internet.

One key part of staying safe online is to keep your personal information private. This means not telling strangers your full name, where you live, your phone number, or where you go to school. It’s like not telling a person you just met all your secrets. Only share personal details with people and websites you trust, and even then, only when it’s necessary.

Safe Passwords

A good way to protect your information is by using safe passwords. Think of a password like a key to your online room. You wouldn’t give your house key to just anyone, right? Make sure your password is hard to guess. Use a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols, and don’t use easy things like your name or birthday. And remember, don’t share your password with friends; it’s meant to be a secret.

Be Careful What You Click

When you’re online, you’ll see lots of things to click on, like ads or links in emails. But not all of them are safe. Some can be tricks to take your information or put bad software on your computer. This is like picking up a piece of candy from the ground – it’s not a good idea. If something looks strange or too good to be true, it’s best not to click on it.

Online Strangers

Just like in the real world, you might meet people you don’t know on the internet. Be cautious when talking to strangers online. They might not be who they say they are. It’s like talking to someone with a mask on; you can’t be sure of who’s behind it. Never agree to meet someone in person that you’ve only talked to online without a trusted adult.

Using Social Media Wisely

Social media is a place to connect with friends and have fun. But, be smart about what you post. Don’t put up pictures or information that you wouldn’t want everyone to see. Once something is on the internet, it can be there forever, even if you delete it. It’s like writing in wet cement; once it dries, it’s really hard to get rid of.

Ask for Help

If something online makes you feel uncomfortable or if you’re not sure if something is safe, ask a trusted adult for help. This could be a parent, teacher, or an older sibling. It’s like when you’re not sure about crossing the street; you ask for someone’s hand.

Remember, being safe on the internet is a lot like being safe in everyday life. By keeping your information to yourself, using strong passwords, being careful about what you click, being cautious with strangers, using social media wisely, and asking for help, you can enjoy all the good things the internet has to offer without worry. Stay alert and stay safe!

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Internet Revolution
  • Essay on Close Friend
  • Essay on Internet Making Us Dumber

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Safety — The different safety aspects of online safety

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The Different Safety Aspects of Online Safety

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Internet Safety for Kids  - Teaching Kids About Internet Safety

Internet safety for kids  -, teaching kids about internet safety, internet safety for kids teaching kids about internet safety.

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Internet Safety for Kids: Teaching Kids About Internet Safety

Lesson 1: teaching kids about internet safety,  teaching kids about internet safety.

Intro illustration for Internet Safety for Kids

The Internet can be a wonderful place to learn, shop, play games, and talk to your friends. Unfortunately, there are also predators, identity thieves, and others online who may try to harm you. In order to be safe online, it's important for you and your kids to be aware of the dangers.

Many kids are confident that they know how to be safe online. However, there are a few reasons kids are often more at risk. They may not always think about the consequences of their actions, which can cause them to share too much information about themselves. Kids also are sometimes specifically targeted by cyberbullies or predators.

If you're a parent or guardian, you can help to keep your kids safe by talking to them about their Internet use , teaching them about online dangers , and learning everything you can about the Internet so you can make informed decisions.

About this tutorial

This tutorial is designed for any parent or guardian who wants to learn how to keep their kids safe online. You may want to review our Internet Safety tutorial first so you'll have a basic understanding of online safety. Throughout this tutorial, we'll link to other resources you can use if you want more information. We'll also link to some activities, videos, and other resources that are geared toward kids and teens. You may want to show these resources to your kids or even work through them together.

If you want to learn the basics of using the Internet, you can also check out our Internet Basics , Email 101 , and Beyond Email tutorials.

Understanding online dangers

In order to keep your kids safe, you'll need to know about the different types of online dangers that exist. For example, kids and teens may find inappropriate content on the Internet, such as pornography or obscene language. There is also a possibility of cyberbullying or cyberharassment from others online. This does not mean your child will encounter all of these threats. However, knowing about the dangers can help you and your kids make smart decisions online.

Review the interactive below to learn about some of the dangers kids can encounter online.

labeled graphic

Malware is malicious software that is designed to damage your computer or steal your personal information . It includes viruses, spyware, and other types of software.

Malware is often secretly bundled with other software, and it can also infect email attachments.

Cyber-stalking

Cyber-stalking is any kind of harassment or threatening behavior that occurs online. It can happen through instant messaging, text messaging, email, or social networks. If the perpetrator is a child or teen, it is often called cyberbullying .

In the online world, piracy refers to illegally sharing copyrighted materials . This can include music, movies, TV shows, and software. For many kids, sharing files may seem innocent, but it can result in stiff penalties.

importance of online safety essay

Phishing is a type of scam where the scammer tries to trick you into revealing your personal information . Usually, it involves an email, instant message, or website that is designed to look like it's from a legitimate company.

importance of online safety essay

The Internet contains a lot of content you probably don't want your kids to see, including pornography, violent content, and vulgar language .

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is bullying that occurs online , often through instant messaging, text messaging, email, and social networks.

Cyberbullies may be the same age as the victims, or they may be older. If the perpetrator is an adult, it is generally called cyber-stalking or cyberharassment .

Revealing too much

Many kids and teens like to post photos and share information about themselves. In some cases, this information can be used by online predators .

It's also possible for an embarrassing photo to damage a kid's or teen's reputation . This can affect their social life, and it may even come back to haunt them years later when they're applying for a job.

importance of online safety essay

Other types of dangers

Whenever someone uses a computer, there is a risk of eye strain , wrist strain , and other injuries . You can help prevent this by limiting the amount of time your kids spend on computers and mobile devices. For tips on avoiding injury, read Creating a Safe Workspace in our Computer Basics tutorial.

There's also another reason to limit your kids' Internet use: Because people are spending more and more time online, Internet addiction is becoming a more significant problem. Internet use can be a good thing, but if it becomes an addiction it can affect a person's offline life.

Places where dangers can occur

It's important for kids to be careful whenever they're connected to the Internet because online dangers are not just limited to bad websites . Chat rooms, computer games, and even social networking sites can be risky. If your kids have mobile phones, they'll also need to be careful when texting or when accessing the Internet on their phones.

Review the slideshow below to learn about some of the places online where kids can be at risk.

importance of online safety essay

Guidelines for keeping your kids safe

It can be difficult to keep your kids completely safe online. Even if you set up parental controls on your home computer, your kids will use many other computers that don't have parental controls. To keep your kids safe, you'll need to teach them to make good decisions online—even when you're not around.

Below are some general tips you can use when teaching your kids about online safety:

  • Learn everything you can about the Internet. Being familiar with the Internet will not only help you understand the risks, but it will also help you talk to your kids.
  • Set standards for what your kids can and cannot do online. It's important to make rules for your kids so they know what's expected of them. Don't wait until something bad happens to start creating guidelines.
  • Teach your kids to keep personal information private . It's usually a bad idea to post personal information online such as phone numbers, addresses, and credit cards. If criminals gain access to this information, they can use it to harm you or your family.
  • Teach your kids to use social networking sites safely. Sites like Facebook allow kids—and adults—to share photos and videos of themselves, as well as have conversations with friends and strangers. If your kids share something with friends, it's still possible for it to get into the wrong hands. Generally, they should only post something online if they're comfortable with everyone in the world seeing it.
  • Encourage your kids to come to you if they encounter a problem. If your child gets into trouble online, you'll want him or her to come to you instead of hiding it. Keep in mind that your kids could accidentally encounter a bad site, even if they're doing everything right.
  • Talk to your kids about Internet use. Talk to your kids regularly about how they use the Internet. If they're in the habit of talking to you about the Internet, they'll be more willing to come to you if there's a problem.

The Federal Trade Commission has videos and other resources you may find helpful. Watch the following video to learn more about talking to your kids about Internet safety.

Minimizing risks at home

illustration of parental controls

If you have a home computer your kids use, there are some extra precautions you can take to make it safer. Remember that your kids will probably use many other computers, and these precautions won't keep them safe when they're not at home. Also, keep in mind that these are merely suggestions; depending on your parenting style and your kids' ages, you may choose not to use all of them.

  • Keep the computer in the living room or in another common area. By putting the computer in a common area of the house, you can reduce the chance that they'll talk to strangers or visit inappropriate websites. For teens, you may choose to give them more freedom about where they use the computer (especially if they have their own computers).
  • Install antivirus software. Viruses and other malware are a risk for any computer (although Macs are slightly safer). To protect your computer, you can install antivirus software such as BitDefender or Norton .
  • Use a kid-friendly search engine. Regular search engines may return results with inappropriate content you don't want your kids to see. However, there are some search engines that are designed to only return kid-friendly results (although there is still the possibility of inappropriate results getting through). Examples include KidTopia and KidRex.org .
  • Use parental controls. Windows and Mac OS X allow you to add parental controls to user accounts. These include time limits , website restrictions , and controlling which applications can be opened . You can also buy parental control software like Net Nanny , which has versions for Windows and Mac.

Creating an Internet safety contract

Once you've established Internet guidelines, you may want to put them in writing. You can create an Internet safety contract your kids can sign, and then you can keep a copy of it near the computer.

There are also premade contracts you can download and print. One example is the Family Online Safety Contract , which you can download from the Family Online Safety Institute . In addition to a contract, it includes a contract for parents, which contains guidelines you may find helpful.

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Essay on Importance of Internet: Samples for Students

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  • Nov 23, 2023

essay on importance of internet

Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work. Students were able to study without the risk of catching COVID-19 because of the Internet. The importance of the internet is also a common topic in various entrance exams such as SAT , TOEFL , and UPSC . In this blog, you will learn how to write an essay on the importance of the Internet.

This Blog Includes:

Tips to write the perfect essay on internet, sample 1 of essay on the importance of the internet (100 words), sample essay 2 – importance of the internet (150 words), sample essay 3 on use of internet for student (300 words).

Also Read: LNAT Sample Essays

importance of online safety essay

Now the task of essay writing may not always be easy, hence candidates must always know a few tips to write the perfect essay. Mentioned below are a few tips for writing the correct essay:

  • Prepare a basic outline to make sure there is continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
  • Follow a given structure. Begin with an introduction then move on to the body which should be detailed and encapsulate the essence of the topic and finally the conclusion for readers to be able to comprehend the essay in a certain manner
  • Students can also try to include solutions in their conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read.

Also Read: UPSC Essay Topics

The last few years have witnessed heavy reliance on the Internet. This has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. If we take the current scenario, we cannot ignore how important the Internet is in our everyday lives. It is now indeed a challenging task to visualize a world without the internet. One may define the internet as a large library composed of stuff like – records, pictures, websites, and pieces of information. Another sector in which the internet has an undeniably important role to play is the field of communication. Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have also been just a dream. 

Also Read: IELTS Essay Topics

With the significant progress in technology, the importance of the internet has only multiplied with time. The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. By employing the correct usage of the internet, we can find various information about the world. The internet hosts Wikipedia, which is considered to be one of the largest best-composed reference books kept up by a vast community of volunteer scholars and editors from all over the world. Through the internet, one may get answers to all their curiosity.

In the education sector too, it plays a major role, especially taking into consideration the pandemic. The Internet during the pandemic provided an easy alternative to replace the traditional education system and offers additional resources for studying, students can take their classes in the comforts of their homes. Through the internet, they can also browse for classes – lectures at no extra cost. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers. It offers various recreational advantages as well. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life.

Also Read: TOEFL Sample Essays

One may correctly define the 21st century as the age of science and technology. However, this has been possible not only by the efforts of the current generation but also by the previous generation. The result of one such advancement in the field of science and technology is the Internet. What is the Internet? So the internet can be called a connected group of networks that enable electronic communication. It is considered to be the world’s largest communication connecting millions of users.

The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. Given the current scenario, the Internet has become a massive part of our daily lives, and it is now a challenging task to imagine the world without the Internet. The importance of the Internet in the field of communication definitely cannot be ignored.

Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have been just a dream. Today we can talk to people all over the globe only because of services like email, messenger, etc that are heavily reliant on the internet. Without the internet, it would be hard to imagine how large the world would be. The advent of the internet has made the task of building global friendships very easy.

The youth is mainly attracted by entertainment services. Streaming platforms like Amazon , Netflix, and YouTube have also gained immense popularity among internet users over the past few years. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers among people too. 

In addition to these, it has various recreational advantages to offer as well. For instance, people can search for fun videos to watch and play games online with friends and other people all over the globe. Hence, we can say the internet holds immense importance in today’s era. Internet technology has indeed changed the dynamics of how we communicate, respond or entertain ourselves. Its importance in everyday life is never-ending. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life. In the future too, we will see further changes in technology .

Also Read: SAT to Drop Optional Essays and Subject Tests from the Exam

Related Articles

The internet provides us with facts and data, as well as information and knowledge, to aid in our personal, social, and economic development. The internet has various applications; nevertheless, how we utilize it in our daily lives is determined by our particular needs and ambitions.

Here are five uses of the internet: email; sharing of files; watching movies and listening to songs; research purposes; and education.

The Internet has also altered our interactions with our families, friends, and life partners. Everyone is now connected to everyone else in a more simplified, accessible, and immediate manner; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

This was all about an essay on importance of Internet. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Live provides the best online test prep for the same. Register today to know more!

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Nikita Puri

Nikita is a creative writer and editor, who is always ready to learn new skills. She has great knowledge about study abroad universities, researching and writing blogs about them. Being a perfectionist, she has a habit of keeping her tasks complete on time before the OCD hits her. When Nikita is not busy working, you can find her eating while binge-watching The office. Also, she breathes music. She has done her bachelor's from Delhi University and her master's from Jamia Millia Islamia.

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The Importance of Online Safety Protecting your family and your photographs

When it comes to technology there is a beauty to it. Not only can we take a number of photos and post them online within minutes, but we can also easily communicate with friends and family through different social media platforms. During our time in this pandemic, we can all agree on how much more we have relied on technology. Posting photos online of our memories when travelling, or posting a photo of your child being homeschooled. By doing this, it has helped different family members be able to see the memories that you and your children have been creating. 

And even though it has been mentioned that there is a beauty of the online world, it also can bring concern to us all, with many worrying about online safety. Many parents use YouTube and Instagram as a way to communicate with the world and make their viewers feel like a part of their family. And that’s before mentioning Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter…and so on.

Yet trolling can happen; this is when someone intentionally sets out to upset another person online, via their social media. You don’t have to be Beyonce to receive rude and upsetting comments about your child. All you have to do is have a quick scan in the comments section on different social media platforms and you can see how cruel people can be when they are invisible.

And even putting trolling aside, social media, unfortunately, presents other undesirable opportunities for those wishing to cause harm to – or take advantage of – children.

No one wants to admit the negative side of social media, because it has brought us all globally closer together. But the negative side exists – and so, therefore, does a need to be able to share images and videos, especially of your children, in a safe environment. 

Online safety of child images

How does the public feel about being online?

When growing up, the rules of safety were very different than now. The main focus point was how to be safe outside and we all know what those rules were. Don’t talk to strangers, if you feel like you’re being followed then cross the road – and there were a lot more. But nowadays there is another layer to safety and that is how to be safe online. It’s not just children who need to be safe, we all need to be safe online no matter our age. 

And parents do have different opinions when it comes to being safe online, and what they can do and shouldn’t do. 

Who is responsible for online safety?

The Family Online Safety Institute researched the digital lives of today’s family, and they found that the approaches to online safety and who is believed to be responsible for it has changed over time. 

Today’s parents with children at school are mainly from the Millennial era, and most of these parents believe online safety is a shared responsibility with only 30% believing they are ‘most’ responsible. 

Most parents believe that they aren’t the only ones who need to make sure that their child is safe being online, but that schools, the government and media industries play a part in online safety as well.

Parents need to think about online safety when posting photos on their children on social media platforms, of course, but this is true for schools as well, because no one can ever truly know who is on the other side of the screen. For example, we can see one way that schools have taken on this responsibility is by blurring photos of children’s faces – a way to respect parents’ wishes and to increase safety online. 

Should parents be posting photos of their children online?

Many parents enjoy being able to post photos of their children on their social media, but there are also other parents who believe that doing this is not right. 

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to this question of whether or not a parent should post photos of their children on Facebook or Instagram. Parents want to post photos of their children, as they love sharing their lives with friends and family. It is a way to interact with other people, and this has been especially true over the 2020/2021 pandemic. Many who were not so committed to ‘online living’ have now incorporated such habits into their lives through the necessity of doing so over the past year.

The proud parent with a child who has done something amazing, such as taking part in a race on sport’s day, will want to document it and share it for their family and friends to see. It is also a chance then to talk about it with others.

The parents who have decided not to do this also have a valid reason, and that’s because once an image is online, anyone can see the photos. For example, Instagram has, on average, one billion people using it per month . This creates many opportunities for abuse – such as digital kidnapping.

If you are not clear on what that is, it is when an online stranger steals photos that a parent has posted of their child and pretends that the child is theirs, and then uploads the photos under their name. There are many hashtags that go with these photos, such as #adoptionrp, to show viewers that this fake and just roleplaying.

Yet once these criminal acts happen, there is nothing a parent can do as the photo is already out of their grasp and even deleting the original photo will not resolve the problem. 

Many parents feel stuck in the middle, torn between believing they should have the right to share the memories of their children growing up, but yet still wanting to protect them.

The writer Sara Gaynes Levy, for example, stated that she decided not to post photos of her daughter, as her husband didn’t feel comfortable with it, yet after a while, she felt left out. A way around this, she found, was using emojis to cover their child’s face on photos. This is a common tactic, and many parents do this to protect their child.

Ultimately, the best solution is to find a place where any parent can feel safe to post photos of their children online and be the one in total control, to decide who can see these photos. 

Online safety videos

The importance of building safety features into websites and apps

We live in a digital world and everything we do has some link to technology, whether it involves working or enjoying our free time. This means it is very important that websites and apps have safety features, as the public is trusting them with protecting whatever they upload.

Most apps, such as Instagram, will have the option to make your profile private, allows you the control of who can follow you and who can see what you post. This helps when it comes to parents posting photos of their children, as some create a whole new account for their child and only allows their family to follow. 

This sounds perfect and safe, right? In the perfect world, the answer would be yes, in reality, even when changing your setting to private it doesn’t mean the data is protected. Each day social media becomes bigger and bigger and with every post a user uploads onto a platform, whether it is Facebook or TikTok, for example, they collect data.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse investigated data breaches and found that since 2005 there have been 9,044 public breaches, with 10 billion records being exposed.

Keep in mind that this is what they have found, but it is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg.

So how can websites and apps make sure that data breaches won’t happen? 

Thirty-four experts were asked a simple question: what are the biggest mistakes companies make when securing data? One consultant, Eric Jeffery, states that businesses believe they are securing their data, but they do not. This can sound scary, but the truth is that there will always be people trying to steal data, as the online world runs 24/7. Dr Scott Nelson adds to this, expressing that, as a user, you should trust yourself. We know that data breaches can happen and therefore, if you are not sure if the  link is safe , if you do not feel comfortable getting a certain app, or uploading a photo of your child because of what could happen, then you should listen to yourself.

However, there are ways that apps and websites do make the public, such as parents, feel more comfortable when it comes to deciding which app they will use. Criminal hackers often use brute force – trial-and-error – to guess a user’s password. One way that companies try to prevent this from happening is by making sure their users have a long password, with a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols. 

Another way is by limiting login attempts, locking the account after several attempts at entering a password. Instagram does this and allows users ten tries before locking them out for an hour. Although this is good, as it helps to keep hackers out, some people can be forgetful and keep entering the wrong password.

This means there needs to be a system for the genuine, yet forgetful, users to be able to access their account in other ways (for example, sending a reset password email and link, or a text with a one-time code).

These are some ways to help keep hackers from breaching accounts, and a way to make you, as a parent, feel safer with the app that you use to share your family life. 

Online safety of photos

What is Splento doing to help?

Splento App is a place for you to feel safe and secure when uploading photos of your family.

This safety starts from the moment you sign on with a triple-authentication process. At all times, you are the one in control, deciding who can see the photos of your children.

We understand how important it is to keep children safe, especially as the online world is complex and presents multiple opportunities for security breaches. That we never sell our data to third parties. 

And for extra peace of mind, we give you the option to use two-factor authentication; if you wish to use the app on a new device, we will ask you for a code in addition to your password. 

The app has a load more features, but ultimately we have created it for you so that you will have the chance to share your memories of your child growing up with your family and friends, without having to stick an emoji on your child’s face and worry who else can see this photo.

Splento App is about putting family and security first, rather than using open, public and more vulnerable platforms for personal images that you want to keep personal. 

Interested? Then remember what Dr Nelson said above – trust yourself.

You can check out the Splento App for yourself on our website, and if you wish, sign up for a free demo. 

The Splento App is available to try now – for free!

Hit the button below to try out Splento App for yourself and start sharing all your favourite photos with your family and friends, today!

Try Splento App

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Providing Safe and Healthy Work Environment Essay

Introduction, body of the text, reference list.

Workplace safety is a matter of great importance. It is an issue worthy utmost concern from the management in any given organization (Harvey, 2003). This is because safety involves “preventing harm whether physical, physiological, or psychological in nature” (Nigel, 2004). Ensuring employees’ safety and health can be equated to protecting company’s assets (Nigel, 2004). This is because employees are the most important assets in an organization.

In a situation where an employee is injured in the workplace, this may result to lowered productivity and increased expenses to the organization (Harvey, 2003). This is because the company will spend more money in treating the injured employee. On the other hand, having appropriate measures that will guarantee safe workplace means that, the workforce will be healthy and ready to sustain a steady economical growth in both short and long-term (Nigel, 2004). Therefore, the most critical issue is maintaining a safe and healthy workplace environment for social change.

Because the issue of workplace safety is a very sensitive topic, the HR departments in most organizations have tried to implement numerous measures that are meant to ensure a safe and healthy work environment. Among the proposed solutions, include designing safer systems of work, exhibiting commitment by the HR department, developing a monitoring policy, training employees, inspecting the work environment, establishing appropriate preventing procedures and controls, setting up safety and health committees, and drawing up action plan (Admin, 2011). Among these recommended solution I fully agree with developing training program, inspecting the workplace, and designing safer system in the workplace.

One of the most reliable ways of ensuring workplace safety and health is by providing appropriate training to employees (Admin, 2011). Developing a safety and healthy workplace training program can play a major role in promoting healthy and safety workplace. Developing a relevant training program will help employees to acquire knowledge, skills, and experience (Admin, 2011). Training on issues of health and safety in the workplace will not only increase skills, but will also help in improving employees’ performance and hence increase productivity (Nigel, 2004).

In a farm (a coffee farm), the human resource manager can develop a training program that will provide knowledge and enlighten all farm employees on issues of safety in their work environment. In such a farm, a number of factors pose potential health and safety risks. Farm machinery, drugs and chemical, fire, and individuals are risks to healthy and safety in the farm. The HR manager should sensitize all involved participants by making them understand the importance of safety in such a work environment.

As a healthy and safety measure, the HR manager should provide training to all employees so that they can acquire appropriate knowledge on how to use farm machineries, how to prevent fire outbreaks, how to prevent accidents, and proper handling of drugs and chemicals. Such training is imperative as the employees get to know the best practices that would minimize potential hazards and hence ensuring healthy and safety in the workplace (Nigel, 2004).

In order to ensure effective training program, both employees and the manager must play their roles accordingly. The HR manager has a legal and moral obligation to play in the training process. When beginning a healthy and safety training program, the HR manager should ensure that, the training environment is friendly for all staff (Nigel, 2004). For instance, it should be accommodative to employees with special needs. As a moral obligation, the HR should also ensure that the training program does not discriminate any of the organization’s employees (Nigel, 2004).

The program should be able to promote fairness. In order to improve the workplace safety and health through training, the HR manager must fully inform his subordinates of their rights and responsibilities throughout the training session. Most importantly, the manager should commit resources necessary to complete the safety and health training session. He should be able to provide safety equipments (Nigel, 2004).

I do agree that designing safer system of works is also a safety and health measure in the work environment. Purchasing working and “in good condition” machines will reduce the safety and health hazards in any given organization (Nigel, 2004). It has been noted that most of the work-related accidents happen due to failure of machines (Harvey, 2003). In a factory for instance, when employees are operating a cutting machine, they may be exposed to safety risks in case a machine fails. Such a machine may cause severe damage to the operators (employees).

Designing safer systems is an appropriate solution because the risk is eliminated at the early stages. The HR should carry an extensive research to investigate and indentify machineries that are not in good condition. The HR should inform his staff about those machineries that are not effective so that they can avoid working with such machines. As a long-term solution, the management should replace non-working machines with properly working machines.

I am also of the opinion that carryout inspection at the work can also improve workplace safety and health (Harvey, 2003). As such, it is important for all companies and organizations to do regular safety inspections in the Workplace. Conducting workplace inspection has many advantages namely, cost saving, increased workers productivity, and identifying hazards before they cause any harm (Harvey, 2003).

Regular inspection at the workplace saves the organization a lot of money that could be spend for compensating workers in case of an accident. Employees are company’s most valued asset and should be protected at all cost (Harvey, 2003). Preventing accidents that cause physical injury to employees ensures productivity and success of the company. When workers are out of danger, they spend their time working to ensure that they meet the goals and objectives of the company.

In maintaining workplace safety, both the human resource manager and employees have a responsibility to play. The employees need to report any accident or illness that occurs in their area of work promptly to facilitate compensation and insurance cover in time to eliminate any chances of accidents (Harvey, 2003).

As a moral obligation, the human resource manager should ensure that employees work in safe and healthy environment (Harvey, 2003). The management of the organization needs to respond fast to any accident reports without biasness or favor. The HR department needs to investigate any reported cases to find out what caused the accident and any preventive measures that can be used to prevent similar accidents (Harvey, 2003). For instance, restaurants that have electronic equipments or machines that may cause burns and cut among other forms of injury must be inspected to identify any malfunctions in such machines. The HR department should always carryout systematic investigations to ensure adequate safety measures are put in place (Harvey, 2003). Once faults are discovered in such machines, the HR should report the case to the relevant department for maintenance or change of equipments.

In conclusion, while trying to provide safe and healthy work environment, the HR must play his role adequately. As such, the HR should play his legal and moral roles in accordance to company’s policy. The manager should be able to promote fairness and address the needs of all employees without cases of discrimination. The HR should consider a method that best suits the situation and addresses the potential risks for better and safe workplace.

Admin. (2011). Role of Management in Improving Workplace Safety and Health . Web.

Harvey, S. (2003). Workplace Safety . Chatswood: Software Publications Pty, Limited.

Nigel, B. (2004). Workplace safety .Sidney: Pearson Education.

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IvyPanda. (2022, May 4). Providing Safe and Healthy Work Environment. https://ivypanda.com/essays/workplace-safety-importance/

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1. IvyPanda . "Providing Safe and Healthy Work Environment." May 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/workplace-safety-importance/.

Bibliography

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Mr Greg's English Cloud

Short Essay: Safety First

A couple of short essay examples about safety first.

Table of Contents

Safety First Essay Example 1

Safety has always been an integral part of our lives, and it should be a top priority in any workplace or activity. It is essential to ensure that everyone involved in any activity is safe and secure from any potential harm. Accidents and injuries can occur anytime, anywhere, and they can be extremely harmful. Therefore, it is necessary to take proper precautions and follow safety guidelines to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved. In this essay, we will discuss the importance of safety in any workplace or activity and how proper training, equipment, and safety regulations can help prevent accidents and injuries.

Importance of Safety should always be a top priority in any workplace or activity. It is essential to ensure that everyone involved in any activity is safe and secure from any potential harm. Accidents and injuries can occur anytime, anywhere, and they can be extremely harmful. Therefore, it is necessary to take proper precautions and follow safety guidelines to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved. In any workplace, safety should be a part of the culture, and all employees should be trained to follow safety guidelines. It is essential to make sure that everyone understands the importance of safety and how it can help prevent accidents and injuries.

Proper training and equipment can help prevent accidents and injuries. In any workplace or activity, it is essential to provide adequate training to all employees and individuals involved. Proper training will help them understand the potential risks and hazards involved in the activity, and it will help them take necessary precautions to prevent accidents and injuries. Additionally, providing proper equipment and tools is equally important. Faulty or outdated equipment can be dangerous and can cause accidents and injuries. Therefore, it is essential to provide proper equipment and tools, and they should be regularly checked for any possible defects.

Safety regulations and guidelines should be followed to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved. In any workplace or activity, there are specific safety regulations and guidelines that need to be followed. These regulations and guidelines are put in place to ensure the safety of all individuals involved in the activity. It is essential to follow these regulations and guidelines to prevent accidents and injuries. Additionally, safety inspections should be conducted regularly to ensure that all safety guidelines are being followed. Any potential hazards and risks should be identified and addressed immediately.

In conclusion, safety should always be a top priority in any workplace or activity. It is essential to ensure that everyone involved in any activity is safe and secure from any potential harm. Proper training and equipment can help prevent accidents and injuries, and safety regulations and guidelines should be followed to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved. It is essential to understand the importance of safety and take necessary precautions to prevent accidents and injuries. By following safety guidelines and regulations, we can ensure a safe environment for everyone involved.

Safety First Essay Example 2

Safety is an important aspect of our everyday lives, and it should always be given top priority. It involves taking proactive measures to prevent accidents and hazards in various settings. In order to ensure safety, it is crucial to identify potential hazards and take necessary precautions. Safety training and education also play a significant role in promoting safe practices. Workplace safety regulations and policies are essential to protecting employees and creating a safe work environment. This essay will discuss the various ways in which safety first can be achieved, including identifying potential hazards, safety training and education, and workplace safety regulations and policies.

Safety first requires identifying potential hazards and taking proactive measures to prevent accidents. Hazards can be found in various settings, including the workplace, home, and outdoors. In the workplace, hazards can include electrical hazards, chemical hazards, slips, trips, and falls, and machinery hazards. Identifying these hazards and taking necessary precautions can prevent accidents and promote safety. For example, wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) can protect workers from electrical and chemical hazards. Implementing safety measures such as non-slip flooring and proper signage can prevent slips, trips, and falls. Regular maintenance and inspection of machinery can prevent machinery hazards. By taking proactive measures, potential hazards can be prevented, and safety can be ensured.

Safety training and education can help individuals understand and follow safe practices in various settings. Safety training and education can include topics such as fire safety, first aid, and emergency response. In the workplace, safety training can help employees understand the hazards they may encounter and how to prevent accidents. For example, fire safety training can teach employees how to use fire extinguishers and how to evacuate in case of a fire. First aid training can teach employees how to respond to medical emergencies. In addition to workplace safety training and education can also be applied in other settings, such as at home and in outdoor activities. By understanding and following safe practices, accidents can be prevented, and safety can be ensured.

Workplace safety regulations and policies are important for protecting employees and promoting a safe work environment. Workplace safety regulations and policies can include topics such as hazard communication, lockout/tagout procedures, and personal protective equipment requirements. These regulations and policies are designed to protect employees from hazards and promote a safe work environment. For example, hazard communication regulations require employers to inform employees of potential hazards in the workplace and provide appropriate training. Lockout/tagout procedures require the isolation of energy sources during maintenance and repair to prevent accidental start-up. Personal protective equipment requirements require employers to provide and ensure the use of appropriate PPE. By following workplace safety regulations and policies, employees can be protected from hazards, and a safe work environment can be maintained.

In conclusion, safety first is crucial for preventing accidents and promoting safety in various settings. Identifying potential hazards and taking proactive measures to prevent them, safety training and education, and workplace safety regulations and policies are all important aspects of achieving safety first. By following these measures, accidents can be prevented, and safety can be ensured. It is important to always prioritize safety in all aspects of our lives.

Safety First Essay Example 3

Safety is an essential aspect of any workplace, and it should always be a top priority. Companies that prioritize safety have a better chance of preventing accidents and injuries among their employees. It is essential to implement safety measures, conduct regular inspections, and provide training to ensure that the workplace is safe for everyone. This essay will discuss three essential steps that employers can take to ensure safety in the workplace.

The first step to ensuring safety in the workplace is implementing safety measures such as wearing protective gear and following safety protocols. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is essential in reducing the risk of injuries and accidents. Employers must provide their employees with the necessary PPE, such as hard hats, safety goggles, gloves, and safety boots. Employees should be trained on how to use the PPE correctly and be required to wear it at all times when working in hazardous environments. Safety protocols such as locking out machinery before maintenance and repair work can also help prevent workplace accidents.

The second step to ensuring safety in the workplace is conducting regular safety inspections and maintaining equipment and machinery. Regular inspections help identify potential hazards and ensure that equipment and machinery are functioning correctly. Employees should be trained on how to conduct safety inspections and report any issues that they identify immediately. Equipment and machinery should also be well-maintained to prevent breakdowns and accidents. Regular maintenance can help identify potential problems before they occur and ensure that equipment and machinery are functioning correctly.

The third step to ensuring safety in the workplace is educating employees and providing training on safety procedures. Educating employees on safety procedures can increase awareness and promote a culture of safety in the workplace. Employees should be trained on how to identify hazards, how to respond to emergencies, and how to use safety equipment correctly. Training should be provided regularly, and employees should be required to attend. Providing incentives for employees who prioritize safety can also help create a culture of safety in the workplace.

In conclusion, ensuring safety in the workplace is essential for the well-being of employees and the success of companies. Employers must prioritize safety by implementing safety measures, conducting regular inspections, and providing training to their employees. By taking these steps, companies can reduce the risk of accidents and injuries and create a safer workplace for everyone.

About Mr. Greg

Mr. Greg is an English teacher from Edinburgh, Scotland, currently based in Hong Kong. He has over 5 years teaching experience and recently completed his PGCE at the University of Essex Online. In 2013, he graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with a BEng(Hons) in Computing, with a focus on social media.

Mr. Greg’s English Cloud was created in 2020 during the pandemic, aiming to provide students and parents with resources to help facilitate their learning at home.

Whatsapp: +85259609792

[email protected]

importance of online safety essay

English Compositions

Short Essay on Safety First [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

In today’s session, you will learn to write short essays on the popular term ‘Safety First.’ There are going to be three individual sets of short essays written on the topic covering different word limits.  

Feature image of Short Essay on Safety First

Short Essay on Safety First in 100 Words

Safety is the most important measure to take in our lives for any kind of emergency. We are often told about safety first. Safety means protection. We always try to avoid dangers or stay away from any harm. We work very carefully so that we do not get harmed by any problem.

Danger can come at any moment and any place. We are unaware as to when it will attack us. So having safety is our first and foremost priority. Whenever we are at home or outside, we must remember about it. We must never hurry into anything because that can cause us lots of risks. Also, we must keep a safety kit or a first aid box handy. This will help us to tackle any emergency when needed.

Short Essay on Safety First Example

Short Essay on Safety First in 200 Words

Safety means any kind of protection that we observe regularly. And safety first also means making safety our biggest priority. Maintaining safety is extremely important to us. It will keep our family and society safe and sound.

The country must have responsible citizens who can maintain safety. So being safe is for the good of everyone. We must always maintain safety measures. Be it in our home or outside, it will help us to live much better. Today we observe how difficult it is to walk peacefully on the roads. It is because people do not follow safety measures.

Some bike riders drive very rashly. They do not care about the pedestrians or people walking on the road. Often it creates accidents. These accidents are fatal and can kill them as well. The drivers do not consider driving safely and slowly. They drive the car or the bus at full speed. As a result, many people daily meet accidents on the roads.

Even animals are not free of these dangers. Little kids and aged people feel scared to go alone on the roads. Even in our homes, we forget to follow safety measures. So we face several problems and are hurt severely. The dangers can become serious if we ignore our safety. So safety first is our greatest duty to everyone in our country.

Short Essay on Safety First in 400 Words

Safety means protection from any sort of danger. The term safety first is, at present, a frequently used term. Safety is something that we prioritize first. Whenever there is danger, we must take an immediate measure of safety to survive the situation. Thus keeping safety as our biggest priority is the best task to do in our lives. We will stay prepared for any hazards that may arrive on our way.

Unfortunately, people nowadays do not consider safety as the primary need. As a result, we often face severe disasters. The biggest danger takes place outside our homes when we are on the road. The bike riders dive their bikes at high speed. They drive rashly over the roads and highways. Hence it becomes very difficult for the aged and the pedestrians to walk on the roads.

Anytime they can meet an accident, and can also die on spot. Similarly, for other vehicles like a bus or a car, we observe the same picture. The buses collide with other trucks and cars while breaking the traffic rules. It is a bad habit to violate the traffic rules and traffic signals for personal benefits. Maintaining safety on roads is for the benefit of everyone. We must follow the signals and use a zebra crossing while moving to a different route. Walking in between vehicles in a hurry or jumping down a bus while it’s moving can cause serious harm. 

Even on rail lines, we must be cautious. It is always advisable never to cross a rail line while a train is approaching. Similarly, standing near the door while the train is running at full speed can cause tremendous destruction. Some people often take selfies while standing on railways and even use them as fun places. However, it is stupid to take such things lightly. Everyone should remember the safety that can help them to live better.

Safety first applies to our household as well. If there is a little child or an aged person in the house, then these safety measures become very important. One must keep away all sharp objects, fire, oil, and other poisonous goods from their reach. Burners and cylinders should be switched off to avoid any danger. The doors should be closed so that babies cannot crawl outside the house.

Also, basic hygiene is a part of safety. Keeping the house clean will make it safe. Keeping a first aid box and some emergency medicines will protect us from any immediate need. Hence these basic yet important tips can enable us to live better. 

If you have any doubts regarding today’s lesson, kindly let me know through the comment section below. To read more such sessions, keep browsing our website.

Join us on Telegram to get all the latest updates on our upcoming sessions. Thanks for being with us. All the best.

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By Erik Hoel

Mr. Hoel is a neuroscientist and novelist and the author of The Intrinsic Perspective newsletter.

Increasingly, mounds of synthetic A.I.-generated outputs drift across our feeds and our searches. The stakes go far beyond what’s on our screens. The entire culture is becoming affected by A.I.’s runoff, an insidious creep into our most important institutions.

Consider science. Right after the blockbuster release of GPT-4, the latest artificial intelligence model from OpenAI and one of the most advanced in existence, the language of scientific research began to mutate. Especially within the field of A.I. itself.

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Adjectives associated with A.I.-generated text have increased in peer reviews of scientific papers about A.I.

Frequency of adjectives per one million words

Commendable

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A study published this month examined scientists’ peer reviews — researchers’ official pronouncements on others’ work that form the bedrock of scientific progress — across a number of high-profile and prestigious scientific conferences studying A.I. At one such conference, those peer reviews used the word “meticulous” more than 34 times as often as reviews did the previous year. Use of “commendable” was around 10 times as frequent, and “intricate,” 11 times. Other major conferences showed similar patterns.

Such phrasings are, of course, some of the favorite buzzwords of modern large language models like ChatGPT. In other words, significant numbers of researchers at A.I. conferences were caught handing their peer review of others’ work over to A.I. — or, at minimum, writing them with lots of A.I. assistance. And the closer to the deadline the submitted reviews were received, the more A.I. usage was found in them.

If this makes you uncomfortable — especially given A.I.’s current unreliability — or if you think that maybe it shouldn’t be A.I.s reviewing science but the scientists themselves, those feelings highlight the paradox at the core of this technology: It’s unclear what the ethical line is between scam and regular usage. Some A.I.-generated scams are easy to identify, like the medical journal paper featuring a cartoon rat sporting enormous genitalia. Many others are more insidious, like the mislabeled and hallucinated regulatory pathway described in that same paper — a paper that was peer reviewed as well (perhaps, one might speculate, by another A.I.?).

What about when A.I. is used in one of its intended ways — to assist with writing? Recently, there was an uproar when it became obvious that simple searches of scientific databases returned phrases like “As an A.I. language model” in places where authors relying on A.I. had forgotten to cover their tracks. If the same authors had simply deleted those accidental watermarks, would their use of A.I. to write their papers have been fine?

What’s going on in science is a microcosm of a much bigger problem. Post on social media? Any viral post on X now almost certainly includes A.I.-generated replies, from summaries of the original post to reactions written in ChatGPT’s bland Wikipedia-voice, all to farm for follows. Instagram is filling up with A.I.-generated models, Spotify with A.I.-generated songs. Publish a book? Soon after, on Amazon there will often appear A.I.-generated “workbooks” for sale that supposedly accompany your book (which are incorrect in their content; I know because this happened to me). Top Google search results are now often A.I.-generated images or articles. Major media outlets like Sports Illustrated have been creating A.I.-generated articles attributed to equally fake author profiles. Marketers who sell search engine optimization methods openly brag about using A.I. to create thousands of spammed articles to steal traffic from competitors.

Then there is the growing use of generative A.I. to scale the creation of cheap synthetic videos for children on YouTube. Some example outputs are Lovecraftian horrors, like music videos about parrots in which the birds have eyes within eyes, beaks within beaks, morphing unfathomably while singing in an artificial voice, “The parrot in the tree says hello, hello!” The narratives make no sense, characters appear and disappear randomly, and basic facts like the names of shapes are wrong. After I identified a number of such suspicious channels on my newsletter, The Intrinsic Perspective, Wired found evidence of generative A.I. use in the production pipelines of some accounts with hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers.

As a neuroscientist, this worries me. Isn’t it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like cohesive sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need? Einstein supposedly said : “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” But what happens when a toddler is consuming mostly A.I.-generated dream-slop? We find ourselves in the midst of a vast developmental experiment.

There’s so much synthetic garbage on the internet now that A.I. companies and researchers are themselves worried, not about the health of the culture, but about what’s going to happen with their models. As A.I. capabilities ramped up in 2022, I wrote on the risk of culture’s becoming so inundated with A.I. creations that when future A.I.s are trained, the previous A.I. output will leak into the training set, leading to a future of copies of copies of copies, as content became ever more stereotyped and predictable. In 2023 researchers introduced a technical term for how this risk affected A.I. training: model collapse . In a way, we and these companies are in the same boat, paddling through the same sludge streaming into our cultural ocean.

With that unpleasant analogy in mind, it’s worth looking to what is arguably the clearest historical analogy for our current situation: the environmental movement and climate change. For just as companies and individuals were driven to pollute by the inexorable economics of it, so, too, is A.I.’s cultural pollution driven by a rational decision to fill the internet’s voracious appetite for content as cheaply as possible. While environmental problems are nowhere near solved, there has been undeniable progress that has kept our cities mostly free of smog and our lakes mostly free of sewage. How?

Before any specific policy solution was the acknowledgment that environmental pollution was a problem in need of outside legislation. Influential to this view was a perspective developed in 1968 by Garrett Hardin, a biologist and ecologist. Dr. Hardin emphasized that the problem of pollution was driven by people acting in their own interest, and that therefore “we are locked into a system of ‘fouling our own nest,’ so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free-enterprisers.” He summed up the problem as a “tragedy of the commons.” This framing was instrumental for the environmental movement, which would come to rely on government regulation to do what companies alone could or would not.

Once again we find ourselves enacting a tragedy of the commons: short-term economic self-interest encourages using cheap A.I. content to maximize clicks and views, which in turn pollutes our culture and even weakens our grasp on reality. And so far, major A.I. companies are refusing to pursue advanced ways to identify A.I.’s handiwork — which they could do by adding subtle statistical patterns hidden in word use or in the pixels of images.

A common justification for inaction is that human editors can always fiddle around with whatever patterns are used if they know enough. Yet many of the issues we’re experiencing are not caused by motivated and technically skilled malicious actors; they’re caused mostly by regular users’ not adhering to a line of ethical use so fine as to be nigh nonexistent. Most would be uninterested in advanced countermeasures to statistical patterns enforced into outputs that should, ideally, mark them as A.I.-generated.

That’s why the independent researchers were able to detect A.I. outputs in the peer review system with surprisingly high accuracy: They actually tried. Similarly, right now teachers across the nation have created home-brewed output-side detection methods , like adding hidden requests for patterns of word use to essay prompts that appear only when copied and pasted.

In particular, A.I. companies appear opposed to any patterns baked into their output that can improve A.I.-detection efforts to reasonable levels, perhaps because they fear that enforcing such patterns might interfere with the model’s performance by constraining its outputs too much — although there is no current evidence this is a risk. Despite public pledges to develop more advanced watermarking, it’s increasingly clear that the companies are dragging their feet because it goes against the A.I. industry’s bottom line to have detectable products.

To deal with this corporate refusal to act we need the equivalent of a Clean Air Act: a Clean Internet Act. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to legislatively force advanced watermarking intrinsic to generated outputs, like patterns not easily removable. Just as the 20th century required extensive interventions to protect the shared environment, the 21st century is going to require extensive interventions to protect a different, but equally critical, common resource, one we haven’t noticed up until now since it was never under threat: our shared human culture.

Erik Hoel is a neuroscientist, a novelist and the author of The Intrinsic Perspective newsletter.

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Don't get Tinder swindled: Here are 4 essential online dating safety tips

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Dating apps have become something of a necessity for many single people.  

Of course, it’s still possible to meet someone the old-fashioned way with a meet-cute worthy of a sappy holiday movie, but dating apps and websites have made their mark and paved the way for many people to find a match. 

One in ten adults who are either married, living with their partner, or in a committed relationship met their significant other through a dating site or app, a 2023 Pew Research Center study found. 

Dating sites and apps provide a catalog of people to choose from, offering hope of making a connection worthy of a meetup in the real world.

However, a Pew Research Center study found that nearly one-third of people who have used dating apps have safety concerns, so it’s no surprise that the idea of meeting a stranger can be unsettling for some.

Watch this video for tips on how to stay safe while using dating apps.  

Verification Badges 

Many dating apps have added verification badges, which are similar to the ones used on social media platforms. They come in a variety of forms but look for something like a check mark or the word "verified" near the person's name. 

Dating platforms use different ways to verify that the person in the pictures is real. For instance, Bumble and Hinge use selfie verification methods that biometrically compare a real-time selfie to the photos in your profile. 

If there's a profile that piques your interest but isn't verified, that's ok! A lack of verification doesn't mean the profile is fake.

Video Calling 

It’s not uncommon to be wary about sharing your phone number with someone you have never met. 

Apps, including Bumble and The League, offer in-app video calling as an alternative to revealing your contact details.

The video calling option appears once you’ve matched with someone, but there may be some prerequisites to use it.

  • On Bumble (the app known for women making the first move), women can video call a match immediately, whereas men can call once the woman sends a message.
  • Tinder requires both participants to opt-in to the feature before either party can initiate a call. 

Facebook Groups

“Are We Dating The Same Guy” Facebook groups are designed to help people discover any “tea or red flags” on someone they are dating or might meet.

The idea behind these groups is to inform people in cities around the country about potential suitors, not to gossip about people.

The groups have rules around acceptable behavior inside and outside of the page. 

Do’s include: 

  • Sharing the first name and photograph of the person you're curious about. 
  • Asking for dating or relationship advice.

Don’ts include: 

  • Sharing personal details, like social media handles, phone numbers or addresses. 
  • Screenshotting posts and sharing them outside of the page. 
  • Commenting on a person’s looks. 

If you are part of one of these groups, be mindful of what you are posting on a semi-public platform.

Some members of the Chicago-area group are involved in an invasion of privacy and defamation lawsuit filed by a man who was negatively spoken about in the group.

Share Location

So, you’ve arranged to go on a first date. Congratulations! 

Once you’ve decided on a place to meet, share your location with someone you trust and let them know your plans.

Many smartphones have a built-in feature to share your location with someone using the same operating system. You can also use apps like Google Maps or WhatsApp to share your location across different operating systems.

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Purchases you make through our links may earn us and our publishing partners a commission.   

Reviewed helps you find the best stuff and get the most out of what you already own. Our team of tech experts test everything from Apple AirPods and screen protectors to iPhone tripods and car mounts so you can shop for the best of the best. 

  • A rugged iPhone case:  Casekoo Crystal Clear Protective Case  
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New Hanover ‘has never been stronger,’ board chairman says in state of the county address

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New Hanover County has become a sought-after location for both business and pleasure, said Bill Rivenbark, chairman of the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, in his state of the county address Monday .

“As we reflect on the past year, it is important to recognize the remarkable achievements that have shaped our community,” he said.

He pointed to accomplishments in areas like business development, education, workforce housing, public safety, health care and environmental stewardship.

For instance, noting partnerships with Wilmington Business Development and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, Rivenbark said the county has seen significant investment from businesses. He specifically noted the growth occurring along the U.S. 421 corridor.

From the Wilmington Trade Center to the recent groundbreaking for Kessebohmer’s new $30 million headquarters , it appears the growth won't be slowing down.

“You will likely see even more projects in this corridor in the not-so-distant future,” Rivenbark said.

More: With new businesses moving in, US 421 corridor poised for more economic development

He also stressed the importance of workforce housing, and the county’s $15 million investment over five years.

Rivenbark directed a portion of his address to school funding, which has been a hot topic recently as the school system faces a $20 million budget shortfall and possible elimination of hundreds of positions .

Saying the county’s commitment to education has been “steady and impactful,” he offered a list of figures aimed at showcasing the county’s investment. He noted that New Hanover is one of the top counties in the state for per student funding while maintaining one of the lowest property tax rates.

He pointed to new schools that have been built in recent years as well as maintenance projects.

Rivenbark also said the county’s support extends beyond infrastructure. County funding, totaling about $140 million this year, supports pre-K programs, school nurses and school resource officers, he said.

“Your county commissioners have stood firmly behind our schools,” he said.

Rivenbark concluded his state of the county address by saying the county is focused on growth, innovation and community spirit.

“The state of our county has never been stronger,” he said.

AT&T resets account passcodes after millions of customer records leak online

Us telco giant takes action after 2019 data spill.

importance of online safety essay

Phone giant AT&T has reset millions of customer account passcodes after a huge cache of data containing AT&T customer records was dumped online earlier this month, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

The U.S. telco giant initiated the passcode mass-reset after TechCrunch informed AT&T on Monday that the leaked data contained encrypted passcodes that could be used to access AT&T customer accounts.

A security researcher who analyzed the leaked data told TechCrunch that the encrypted account passcodes are easy to decipher. TechCrunch alerted AT&T to the security researcher’s findings.

In a statement provided Saturday, AT&T said: “AT&T has launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts. Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.”

“AT&T does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set,” the statement also said.

TechCrunch held the publication of this story until AT&T could begin resetting customer account passcodes. AT&T also has a post on what customers can do to keep their accounts secure .

AT&T customer account passcodes are typically four-digit numbers that are used as an additional layer of security when accessing a customer’s account, such as calling AT&T customer service, in retail stores, and online.

This is the first time that AT&T has acknowledged that the leaked data belongs to its customers, some three years after a hacker claimed the theft of 73 million AT&T customer records. AT&T had denied a breach of its systems , but the source of the leak remains inconclusive.

AT&T said Saturday that “it is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.”

In 2021, the hacker claiming the AT&T breach posted only a small sample of records, making it difficult to check if the data was authentic. Earlier in March, a data seller published the full 73 million alleged AT&T records online on a known cybercrime forum, allowing for a more detailed analysis of the leaked records. AT&T customers have since confirmed that their leaked account data is accurate .

The leaked data includes AT&T customer names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

Security researcher Sam “Chick3nman” Croley told TechCrunch that each record in the leaked data also contains the AT&T customer’s account passcode in an encrypted format. Croley double-checked his findings by looking up records in the leaked data against AT&T account passcodes known only to him.

Croley said it was not necessary to crack the encryption cipher to unscramble the passcode data.

Croley took all of the encrypted passcodes from the 73 million dataset and removed every duplicate. The result amounted to about 10,000 unique encrypted values, which correlates to each four-digit passcode permutation ranging from 0000 to 9999, with a few outliers for the small number of AT&T customers with account passcodes longer than four digits.

According to Croley, the insufficient randomness of the encrypted data means it’s possible to guess the customer’s four-digit account passcode based on surrounding information in the leaked dataset.

It’s not uncommon for people to set passcodes — particularly if limited to four digits — that mean something to them. That might be the last four digits of a Social Security number or the person’s phone number, the year of someone’s birth, or even the four digits of a house number. All of this surrounding data is found in almost every record in the leaked dataset.

By correlating encrypted account passcodes to surrounding account data — such as customer dates of birth, house numbers, and partial Social Security numbers and phone numbers — Croley was able to reverse-engineer which encrypted values matched which plaintext passcode.

AT&T said it will contact all of the 7.6 million existing customers whose passcodes it reset, as well as current and former customers whose personal information was compromised.

AT&T won’t say how its customers’ data spilled online

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    The top-line statistics about online safety for kids are troubling: According to a 2019 study by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, 40 percent of kids in grades 4-8 reported that they connected or chatted online with a stranger. Meanwhile, the Journal of Adolescent Health reports that approximately one in five youth experience unwanted online exposure to sexually explicit material.

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    Online safety awareness remains a pressing issue as the number of cyberattacks has been increasing in number and in the complexity of the attacks [6]. While the low level of online safety awareness is well-documented, there is a lack of comprehensive discussion on the complex intra- and interpersonal human factors that play into this phenomenon.

  9. Four Essays Addressing Risky Behaviors and Online Safety

    Today, I'm pleased to share four important essays that emerged from the work we've been doing in the Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track: "Moving Beyond One Size Fits All With Digital Citizenship" by Matt Levinson and Deb Socia. This essay addresses some of the challenges that educators face when trying to address online safety and ...

  10. Importance of Online Safety for Students: Essential Tips and Strategies

    Online safety, also known as internet safety or cyber safety, is the practice of protecting oneself and others from potential risks and threats that can arise when using the internet. This encompasses various aspects such as: Protecting personal information and privacy. Avoiding dangerous situations like cyberbullying, online predators, and scams.

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    Understanding Internet Safety. Internet safety is about being protected online. When we use the internet, we share information about ourselves, sometimes without knowing it. It's like leaving the door to your house open; if you're not careful, someone you don't want inside might come in. So, it's important to keep that door closed and ...

  15. The Different Safety Aspects of Online Safety

    Online safety, otherwise termed as internet safety, involves the prevention and protection from security risks associated with using the internet as well as deterring any computer crime that may be posted online (Scheff, 2017). Institute's report on how parents viewed the safety of their children online, only 37% of the parent's felt that ...

  16. Internet Safety for Kids: Teaching Kids About Internet Safety

    Teach your kids to keep personal information private. It's usually a bad idea to post personal information online such as phone numbers, addresses, and credit cards. If criminals gain access to this information, they can use it to harm you or your family. Teach your kids to use social networking sites safely.

  17. Essay on Importance of Internet in 150, 200, 300 Words

    Nov 23, 2023. 5 minute read. Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work.

  18. Discussing Internet Safety With Your Teen

    One of those options is to just go for it. When you outright discuss internet safety with your teenager, make sure that you pick a good time to have the talk. Don't start ranting right away about your teen's internet use and the dangers after a disagreement or when tensions are already high. With teenagers, this can lead to other problems.

  19. The Importance of Online Safety

    The Importance of Online Safety Protecting your family and your photographs 6 May 2021 10 January 2024 10 minute read by Sarah Glatzhofer. Scroll When it comes to technology there is a beauty to it. Not only can we take a number of photos and post them online within minutes, but we can also easily communicate with friends and family through ...

  20. Importance Of Internet Safety Essay

    1085 Words3 Pages. Recommended: essay about internet safety or threats. Internet Safety. Being safe on the web should be the number one priority for every internet user. Below are helpful tips which will help make your online interactions a bit safer. Note that the ultimate safety lies in using common sense in your online activities.

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    Mr. Hoel is a neuroscientist and novelist and the author of The Intrinsic Perspective newsletter. Increasingly, mounds of synthetic A.I.-generated outputs drift across our feeds and our searches ...

  26. Online dating safety tips: How to navigate apps like Hinge safely

    Dating platforms use different ways to verify that the person in the pictures is real. For instance, Bumble and Hinge use selfie verification methods that biometrically compare a real-time selfie ...

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    He pointed to accomplishments in areas like business development, education, workforce housing, public safety, health care and environmental stewardship. ... He also stressed the importance of ...

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