Once its out there, you can’t take it back—meaning, your post, text, photo—whatever it is that you send out from one social media device to another. (Cell phone, computer, tablet)
Students and parents of Vermilion Forks Elementary School (VFE) had a visit with Jesse Miller on Friday, April 12.
Miller is an international public speaker who is in high demand to speak on topics of social media awareness, networking behaviour, online content evaluation and internet safety.
For six years he has engaged students and parents, motivating them to evaluate and change the ways they use social media. During the 2011/12 school year, he was able to speak with over 200,000 students.
While speaking, Millar causes his audience to think hard about the way they use their social media devices. For instance, he asked the students at VFE if they “thought it would be weird to have 100 people following them home.” When they answered yes, he then asked them why they needed 100 plus friends on Facebook, or 100 followers on Twitter.
Miller asked the students what kinds of social media they were using.
Besides Facebook, students are using accounts with Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest and Snap Chat.
Most social media accounts are not supposed to be used by children under the age of 13.
However, by changing the year in which they are born, children have easy access to these accounts.
Miller explained how easy it is to get information like your personal home address from the information you have posted in your social media accounts. “Its easy to do on the internet,” he said, “ get your name from Facebook or Twitter, then on to 411 Canada to get your address and phone number.”
While speaking with the students Miller was able to get them to realize the unsafe practices there were with social media devices as well as how distracting they could be. Students agreed that their cell phones were a distraction during class time, while doing homework and even while they were sleeping.
“We need to change the way we talk to each other,” he said.
He encouraged the students to “be leaders in their community.” He asked them to go home and speak with their parents, evaluate and learn to use the internet and their social media devices in a safe manner and to “find a balance” — like not having their cell phone in class.
Many people believe that what they send out using social media devices just gets “absorbed into cyber-space” and that information is not collected or stored. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Information right down to your IP address, device information and your passwords are stored. If you want to learn more, visit the privacy policy of your social media applications.
