Community Relations
Page Navigation
- Hart County Charter System
- Spotlight on Schools
In the News: Hart Students Learn Online Safety
Brian Buffington is excited about the possibilities the constantly connected world of today provides for students.
But he is also acutely aware of how easily the virtual world can become a real-life nightmare for social media users who may not understand the consequences of their online decisions.
Children are especially vulnerable to the threats which is why Buffington, director of instructional technology for Pioneer Regional Educational Service Agency, visited Hart County elementary school students last week. Buffington spoke to fourth and fifth graders at the schools about digital citizenship, how to properly use social media for positive purposes and how to avoid the many dangers lurking online.
We live in amazing times, he told the students at his first stop at South Hart Elementary on Aug. 29, when we can literally learn, communicate and be entertained anywhere and at anytime. This wasn’t always available to elementary school students. Young students’ options are greater than they ever have been, Buffington said.
“Not only is your life really good, it’s really challenging,” he said.
Too often he said he has seen people post something to social media or share information about themselves without thinking of the consequences.
“We have to think about what will happen if we click that button,” Buffington said.
It is a message he has been teaching for the last five years through Pioneer RESA and one that he tailors to the age groups to which he speaks. Last Thursday’s presentations included some basics he hopes the younger students will remember as they grow up and the digital world continues to expand. They can win on social media by strengthening reputations, encouraging others, learning from others and being positive.
Losing on social media happens when they cyberbully, discourage others or post negative things about others, Buffington said.
Perhaps most importantly, he also told students to never communicate with anyone they do not know, keep their profiles on social media private and never under any circumstances agree to meet someone they met online.
“We need to know the person we’re talking to,” Buffington said. “We can’t be careful enough.”
He told the group about a young boy from Hall County who gave his address to someone he met online through online gaming who he thought was another boy his age. The person ended up being a grown man who came down from Pennsylvania, but was luckily arrested prior to meeting the boy after the boy told an adult about the planned meeting.
“It should have never gotten that far,” Buffington said. “This was a real person in North Georgia who was trying to meet up with a kid.”
Statistics compiled by PureSight Online Child Safety show that Buffington’s story is not an outlier. PureSight.com
says roughly 95 percent of Americans between 12 and 17 years old are online, one in five U.S. teenagers say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the internet and that about 30 percent of victims of internet sexual exploitation are boys. The stats go on to show that in 100 percent of the cases, teens who are victims of sexual predators have gone willingly to meet with them. Complicating matters is that 75 percent of children are willing to share personal information online and that 33 percent of teens are Facebook friends with other people they have not met in person, according to PureSight.
Buffington didn’t go over those statistics with the children, but he did tell the children to only go to websites they think their parents would be OK with, sites they could go to while at school and to only interact with people they know in person.
He also stressed the importance of not using the relative anonymity of social media to be mean. Each mean comment a cyberbully sends is like a real punch or kick to the person receiving it, Buffington said. He encouraged the students to tell an adult like a parent, grandparent, teacher or administrator about any cyberbullying they may encounter and asked them to use social media to be nice to others.
“I would love to see this from South Hart,” Buffington said to the fifth-graders listening.