INTERNET
SAFETY
GUIDELINES
Adults can protect children’s safety online
Please review these best practices and encourage participants to learn and uphold these behaviors. It is important that participants learn how to keep themselves safe in the digital world.
Respect and Relationships
- Encourage students to tell you (or another adult they trust) if someone communicates with them online in a manner that makes them feel uncomfortable.
- Model healthy online interactions including use of appropriate language. Ensure that students don’t interact with people they don’t know during your program.
- Get written consent before posting images of participants online.
- Encourage students students to act carefully online. Online communication can be easily misinterpreted. Further, anyone’s online profile can differ from real-life.
Plagiarism and Copyright
- Do not allow plagiarism or piracy to occur in your program. Participants should not use someone else’s ideas without giving credit or illegally download tools.
- To use copyrighted work (software, ideas) ethically, you must:
- Check who owns it
- Get permission to use it and/or buy it
- Give credit to the creator
- Reinforce the importance of citing references for research, facts/statistics in their work and getting permission to use copyrighted work.
Digital Security and Privacy
- Digital security refers to keeping us, our information, and our digital devices secure from outside threats. Online security risks can include:
- Phishing and/or Clickbaiting: Phony emails, messages or links to fake websites that people use to trick others into giving out personal and financial information.
- Viruses and spyware: Be careful when downloading items and opening email attachments.
- Encourage participants to generate strong passwords for accounts and not share them with others.
- Encourage participants to never post sensitive information like names, addresses, phone numbers, or personal ID numbers online.