Thoughts on Current Approaches to Internet Safety

Teacher Support &/or Advice

I am at a bit of a loss with 'modern day' internet safety talks. For context, I am a somewhat young middle school teacher who has been on the Internet since I was in middle school myself (Over 15 years). The internet safety talks that my school puts on are the exact same internet safety talks I had when I was a kid - i.e. don't send nude pictures, anonymous hate can hurt, and every 14yo you meet online is secretly a 60yo creeper (hello to all the elderly in the chat!).

These points (although all valid) feel very outdated and hardly address the modern day issues that I believe kids could encounter today.

For example, many of these internet safety talks either 1. Approach the situation as if everyone involved is someone the student knows irl or 2. They state 'Just don't talk/make online friends'. The latter advice maybe could've been followed a decade ago but now, with randomized Fortnite lobbies, voice chats, and prevalent online forums, if you are online you are going to be talking to strangers (Especially when parents don't monitor their own kids internet usage 🙄).

I am someone who has had many online friends (even met a few irl) and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. From my time on the Internet, I have personally seen...

  1. Someone shared game logins to an internet friend only to wake up the next morning to find their account deleted
  2. Someone photoshopped a chat to make a friend look bad and then shared it amongst the friend group to get them kicked out
  3. Someone took screenshots of a chat and shared them with spouses/jobs/schools in an effort to get the person in the chat in trouble
  4. Someone offered to buy an online account listing and then got scammed out of the money As most of these situations happened to me on online gaming sites, I 100% see kids getting into as these issues well (and are all situations that the current "internet safety talk" doesn't address).

IMO, Internet safety talks should be talking about things to look out for when online such as ...

  1. Don't trust anyone who doesn't respect your boundaries ("You don't need to know the state I live in" "Aw come one man, don't be weird about it")
  2. Don't trust anyone who says 'Dont tell anyone' or especially 'Dont tell your parents'.
  3. Always assume that anything in your chat/post online is public (even if you're sending it in a private chat) Even just this could go a long way with equipping kids with the tools to safely be on the Internet.

I say all this because I made the mistake of telling an admin that I am good with computers (a rookie mistake, I know) and now I am being tasked to teach a general tech class for this upcoming school year. I am interested in integrating some more modern lessons on internet safety and would love any thoughts, advice, lesson suggestions, or module recommendations to check out before I start the school year. What are your thoughts on this? Am I way off base with Internet safety? What lesson have you learned to safely be on the Internet?

Posted Aug 5, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

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