GBI warns parents of dangers lurking online
Nov. 25—presentative from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation came to Thomas County Middle School to speak at Social Media Awareness Night.
Helping inform families about various types of social media and how to keep safe in the virtual world, Special Agent Hank Day also spoke about the ignorance pervading the younger generations regarding the unlawful nature of the material they trade over social media.
"As far as I know, it hasn't happened here in Thomas County, but in other counties, other county magistrate judges, school resource officers have come to me and been like, this is, this is a big problem, there's inappropriate things that people are putting out," Day said. "I mean, there's students in middle school and high school that are being charged with child molestation based on the things out on social media."
It isn't because of rebelliousness or a desire to do wrong a majority of the time, according to Day, but rather simply because they do not know better.
"And it's just because they don't know better," he said. "It's not because they know they're doing something wrong and they're wanting to be rebellious, it's cause they don't know any better. So, that's one of our main goals, to get out there and educate parents, educate students on, you know, the do's and don't's of the internet, social media sites."
Many students in middle and high school, he said, walk a fine line on what they put on the internet or keep on their devices.
"The law is very specific when it comes to things you can and can't do, when it comes to children online, when it comes to social media and it's black and white, it's very detailed," he said. "There are a lot of our kids out there that are breaking the law on a regular basis and all it takes is a parent or a guardian or a teacher to walk by and see something."
The biggest thing a parent can do is to communicate with their children, according to Day. Tools exist, he said, that allow hands-off monitoring for online activity of children, which can help nip certain behaviors in the bud.
"I think the biggest thing is communication," he said. "There's a lot of tools that you can buy, you can download, and some things called Bark or Gab Wireless, these are like monitoring systems you can put on your children's social media accounts, on their phones, on their tablets, on their computers."
Wes Davis, the technology director of Thomas County schools, said that as a blanket policy they do not allow social media through the accounts provided to students.
"As a blanket policy, we do not allow social media through our accounts and networks for students," he said. "We have, basically, a tiered system. All our students get filtered by GoGuardian, which is something that's pushed out, an app or an extension, it's pushed out through the chrome books that is tied to their student account, so no matter what device they long into, it's going to be tied into GoGuardian, cause as a school-supplied account, we have to meet certain regulations and everything, make sure it's filtered.
Davis went onto explain other applications utilized to keep students safe and protected, such as Gaggle, which connects to the Google Drives' of the student accounts and flags illicit material that may have been uploaded intentional or by mistake, with further action taken by administrators.
As the number of cyber-tips, alerts received regarding dubious online material, in the Georgia area continue to rise, and the danger of bad actors and predators exist, Day said that it is important to stay safe and keep an eye on what's getting uploaded to the internet.
