Safer Internet Day Aims To Get Parents, Kids Talking About Online Responsibility
by KYW's Ian Bush
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- This is 'Safer Internet Day,' a global event that centers around an examination of online privacy and personal responsibility.
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia played host to several hundred school kids, and the rest of the U.S. audience watched on live stream.
It's an oft-repeated admonition: when it comes to the Internet, "everything you do, everything you say, everything you share is not private," says Myrna Soto, the top information security officer at Comcast. "And it's permanent."
How to practice what's preached? It begins with a conversation "IRL" -- in real life.
"My generation and my parents' generation? We're the worst at this, not you," says Joe Gervais, a security expert at Lifelock. The tables are turned, he believes, because students have grown up in an age of hyperexposure.
"You have the talk with your parents," he says. "Your generation has a more careful sense of privacy than my generation does."
While kids should take the lead and be the conversation starter with mom and dad, "I don't want to disempower the parents and educators out there," says Jaclyn Beauchere, Microsoft's chief online safety officer. "They've been around the block, they know the risks, they understand the liabilities and what can go wrong. So working together with your technical knowledge as youth and our ability of having lived life a little bit, we can really conquer this thing."
TheSmartTalk.org has an interactive feature to help parents and students build a contract for online activity, covering safety and privacy, screen time, social media, apps and downloads, and texting and calling.
"So no one forgets the ground rules," says National PTA president Laura Bay.
