What should be done to help students stay safe while being online?

We spend a lot of time on the internet doing multiple of online tasks from searching new information, making presentations and school projects, virtual classes and meetings, checking trending videos, playing online games, to simple chatting and sending pictures to friends. Billions of people use the internet and not all of them are aware of problems that may arise while doing so. Kids and teen are much more likely to be subjected to hackers or even verbal or physical harassment and bullying while being online. Here are some tips that we should teach students at such ages to avoid falling into such problems.

The first thing that students should know about internet safety is that whatever posted on the internet will stay there forever! Your grandchildren will be able at some stage to read your posts and thoughts! So, when dealing with social media, it is necessary to follow up with the privacy terms they apply.

The second thing to be taken into consideration is to avoid putting lots of personal information out there and only share what is required with friends. If not, then this causes the accounts to be subjected to attackers and hackers who would take advantage of you.

A third thing is to not forget about smart phone's safety. Cyber safety should extend to your phones as well when it comes to text safety the same way our parents used to tell us to never accept any candies or gifts or even respond to strangers. So, they should be taught to not answer texts or cell phones from strange or unknown numbers. They should also know to stop communicating with someone who doesn't make them feel comfortable and never be afraid or shy to speak outload with their parents, school councillors, teachers, or other trusted adults about any out-of-normal incidents like bullying, verbal or sexual harassment. Moreover, they shall not meet in person with someone they have already known online unless they take a friend with them a sit in public places.

Now, being a part of the worldwide web, one should know how to handle hackers in an intelligent way and this would be the fourth thing to be taken into account. A bunch of things can be done relating to the previously mentioned idea. One should know very well that no mater how careful you might be, still your accounts can get hacked! To ensure safety, one can simply change the account's password when it gets hacked and make a new stronger and unpredictable one. In addition, there is always the option of using the two-step verification or using many emails to protect your account. One can also tell friends to report or block hacked accounts, use software to detect viruses, and most importantly to back up important files so that they would never be lost.

The internet can be a wonderful world to explore but one should always make sure how to stay safe and teach students how to properly act while surfing it.