Discovering Discord during the COVID-19 pandemic, in 7th grade, as a cringy 11-year-old who had just gotten into anime, seemed like stumbling upon an all-you-can-eat buffet as a starving Victorian peasant. Because I was so deprived of human interaction, I excitedly tried to join a handful of servers catered to my interests; however, Discord is a 13+ app, so I ended up having to lie about my age to get access to these servers. At the time, it was a lot of fun: sneakily staying up until 3 in the morning to share memes in the respective channel, joining voice calls and playing Among Us with the moderators and older members I looked up to, every experience I had was seen through rose-tinted lenses. Looking back on all of this now, however, while I’m 17 and a lot less cringy (hopefully), I realize just how dangerous that was and how lucky I am that nothing bad happened to me. Unfortunately, millions of pre-teen and teenage netizens don’t share the same luck that I do, as they get exploited by not just strangers on the internet, but by their own peers as well. This is why it is important that students are taught proper digital citizenship skills in schools, in order to solidify their safety online and prevent the spread of cyberbullying.
It’s pretty much a universal fact that sharing personal information online is a huge no-no, but tons of people seem to unintentionally overlook just how much of themselves they put out for others to see. I mean, let’s think about it: when you post that group picture of your sports team to your public Instagram story, did you check to make sure that your school’s full name isn’t clearly in the frame? Or, when you’re telling your “online friend” what state and city you live in, just in case you were to meet up one day, do you ever wonder if them saying that they live in the same city is too good to be true, or if that picture they sent of themself before was stolen off of Pinterest? Disregarding things like this can give internet weirdos an opportunity to gain and exploit personal details about your life, which is why digital citizenship is an important skill to be taught; you’ll know to crop your school’s name out of the group picture, refrain from sending your location to anonymous “friends,” and even private your social media accounts to keep yourself safe and sound.
Digital citizenship skills can not only prevent weirdos that you don’t know on the internet from causing you harm, but weirdos you know in real life that like to partake in cyberbullying. The topic of cyberbullying is a bit controversial among pre-teens and teenagers, since the usual response to victims is “just log off” or “hit the block button.” But if that ring of spam accounts on Instagram is spreading embarrassing videos of a fight you lost during lunch over a honey bun or sending threats to hurt you in your DMs, I’d say it’d be pretty hard to ignore. With digital citizenship skills, it’ll be easy to determine whether a post is just harmless ragebait made to get a reaction out of someone, or genuine harassment that is worthy of being reported and disciplined for.
Now, people may think that spending our “Pride Time” classes talking about digital citizenship skills is completely useless because why should the school care about what students are doing in their own online spaces? As long as nothing fishy happens during school hours and on our precious Chromebooks, it should be none of their business, right? Well, truth be told, school spaces and internet spaces are closely intertwined with each other, and each interaction made online can manifest in the busy hallways. Any plans created through texts to work on a group project in the commons or any bomb or gun threats made against the school on a blog post can follow anyone to their bus stop, on the road, and into the building, which shows why teaching digital citizenship skills is actually not as useless as one may think. It fosters more positive, friendly interactions between students both on cellphones and in the classrooms.
I know it was really hard to get through this essay without an AI narrator or a slime-making video in the background, but all I’m trying to say is that digital citizenship should be more widely taught by not just our high school, but schools across the world, in order to keep teens safe in online spaces and draw the line for “edgelord” behaviors like cyberbullying. The internet is only getting bigger by the day, and without proper guidance and knowledge, growing adolescents can sink below this deep pool of spam ads and suspicious friend requests. So, while your tech-ed classes are going into detail on CPUs and other kinds of mechanical gadgetry, maybe suggest talking about how to spot predatory users and websites to ensure that you and your peers are S-tier web surfers.
