This Week:
This week, we were visited via zoom by Jesse Miller. Jesse offered his insight into online privacy, bullying, consent, and safety. Following our zoom session, we explored our digital footprint through an incognito Google Search.
Jesse Miller – Online Citizenship
I found Jesse’s idea of thinking less about do’s and don’ts regarding new technology in classrooms and more about how to proactively adapt to and embrace change as the way to go. Judging by a comment from a classmate, we don’t all feel the same way, and so it is obvious that this may be a contentious issue moving forward. Using the analogy that horror radio plays in the 30s and 40s were contentious for the perceived damage it will cause young listeners is similar to how people view tech advances today. By today’s standards, the radio plays were tame and innocuous. Certainly, there is merit to my classmates’ concern regarding personality cults, but I don’t believe it is as serious an issue, and would not call it a major mental health problem.
More and more, I have the urge to ban YouTube from my son. He is only 8 years old, but some of the things I have caught him watching were meant for a teen or adult audience. Even supposedly kid-friendly YouTubers like Mr.Beast or LankyBox will often play content like Squid Game in Real Life or LANKYBOX Playing AMANDA THE ADVENTURER, which are presented as fun and exciting, but are based on a very not-child friendly Netflix show and a horror video-game. The latter of which is actually being played by the YouTubers. This is fine and all as it dulls the scariness, but the algorithms will suggest similar content based on the key words. Very quickly, he goes from a kid-friendly channel to a legit murder podcast.
The issues I am having are the nightmares, dark and disturbing drawings and equally dark ideology that he has voiced to me(like having a panic attack thinking about his mother being dead), and he has been having issues at school from property destruction(intentionally flooding two bathrooms on two different days), and punching another kid in the face. Banning YouTube in my house, however, does not seem to be the right answer. YouTube has so much to offer; not only can it be a successful career for some people, but it is filled with educational videos. One of his favourite personalities is Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who designs and makes tons of really cool things. On top of that, I don’t have Mikhail every week, and when he’s not with me, there is no monitoring his online activities. I’ve gotten texts and shared videos from him at 11:30pm.
Like, what? A better approach to banning an entire platform is to work with my child to develop his own self-regulation. I want him to be able to recognize behaviours and content that affect him poorly, and to want to make good choices.
Incognito Google Search
This was an interesting activity, especially after the Miller conversation. We all have an online footprint, and as an individual entering a professional career that can be highly scrutinized, it’s important to stop and think about what information I have put out into the world that is publicly available.
It’s been a while since I have changed my Facebook profile and posts to only be visible to Friends Only. Anyone can still find my profile, but what they can see is very limited. I did a deep dive of all my posts since I created the account in the 9th grade, and deleted anything that did not represent who I was now, and anything that could even remotely be construed as unprofessional. I had a Twitter for a hot-minute in high-school, but haven’t accessed it since. I did go by the last name Dillman throughout high school, so I don’t think my account is something recognizable to people that only know me as Tyler Dean.
Getting back to the Google search, I liked that by going incognito, you are seeing what someone else would see by Googling “Tyler Dean“. Not surprisingly, there was 42 million hits, and yet nothing at all. The combination of Tyler and Dean is so generic, there are millions of hits from football players in Florida to a Spotify artist(if you can call someone with 452 monthly listeners an artist). Even changing the search parameters to “”Tyler Dean” AND “Victoria“”, the only thing related to me was on page 3, and it was an alumni page from a scholarship I received in 2014. Changing the search again to “Tyler Dillman” AND “Cloverdale” resulted in nine hits total, including 4 newspaper articles where I was mentioned from my wrestling days between 2011-2014. Again, nothing note-worthy.
Despite not finding anything scandalous, it is still a good reminder to be mindful of what I am posting, and what I allow to be tagged in. Not that I am friends with parents, or would add students or parents to my personal accounts, but you never know. I am already bad enough when it comes to responding to messages, so I am definitely not going to create a new account just for professional purposes.
My private life can and should be inherently professional, but that’s because that’s who I am. I can have fun and enjoy my life, but I am not one to broadcast my life for all to see. I want people to see me as a “professional potato” like this Summating Spud!
Image by Heriyusuf