Understanding Online Safety and Media Balance

What does it mean to have good media balance?

• Using media in a way that feels healthy and in balance with other life activities

• Watching TV while doing all your homework and never taking breaks.

• Avoiding all face-to-face interactions and only communicating online.

• Staying up all night scrolling through social media so you don’t miss anything.

What does it mean to experience a red flag feeling while on social media?

• Feeling completely safe in giving your new internet friend your home address

• Feeling excited for your friend as you scroll through the pictures of their recent vacation

• Feelings of jealousy, anger, anxiety, being unsafe, or general upset while scrolling through social media.

• Believing that anything you read on the internet is true

What is a phishing scam?

• It means to go fishing with your dad.

• An online game where you catch fish

• A cooking show about fish

• It is when someone poses as an institution, like a bank or school, and posts a message asking you to provide private information.

What online situations should you choose to opt out of?

• When someone you have been talking to on the internet asks you to send them money.

• A well-known book club, with a decent number of members, that meets at a local coffee shop monthly to have book related conversations.

• Choosing to give your address to someone on the internet you have never met, talked to over video chat or even talked to on the phone.

• Clicking a url in an email from amazon even though it does not appear to come from the official website and is talking about something you never even ordered.

What does it mean to be a digital citizen?

• A digital citizen is someone who uses technology safely and responsibly.

• A digital citizen is someone who lives inside of the internet and pays taxes with emojis.

• If you are a digital citizen then you can only use the internet on national holidays.

• As a digital citizen you have a digital pet that makes all your online decisions. Like a personal assistant.

How do you avoid oversharing on the internet?

• Post every thought you have on the internet in real time

• Use a public google doc as a journal to record your feelings

• When you feel a red flag feeling while on the internet you should get off and take a break.

• Livestream your day to day life from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.

What does it mean to be an upstander on the internet?

• Watch cyberbullying happen without doing anything.

• Join in on the bullying because it is just jokes

• An upstander is someone who acts against cyberbullying.

• Report the victim for not being able to take a joke

What does it mean when an online source is credible?

• The source has a cool logo and uses all caps

• It agrees with your own opinion, so it must be right!

• It has memes and a comment section, so they must really know what they are doing.

• It means that the source is credible and trustworthy