From the desk of Tammy Hayes, Middle School Principal:

Tuesday evening, October 26^th, speaker and cyber safety specialist with TGB Solutions, Mark Seguin was our special guest in the lecture hall and presented material to parents and faculty sharing some stark realities of the cyber world that were pretty alarming and sobering at best. I usually like to think of our events at The Brook Hill School as inspiring and encouraging, but this one took on more of a spirit of “Gee, I wish I could throw away all our devices and move my family to an island far, far away from this Big Bad World!”  Obviously, my M. Knight Shyamalan’s, The Village, is not the option nor the answer we can approve;(though I highly recommend the movie) instead, we have to deal, pony up, take the bull by the horns, and get some skin in the game in order to stay involved with our children’s world of social media, both for their sakes and for our peace of mind. So, yes, in this case, what you don’t know can hurt you, and definitely can hurt our children. Yet, there is no way to know it all or stay in front of it, so it is just a matter of being in the process of learning all you can to help them make good decisions about their involvement in the world at their fingertips.

If you weren’t able to attend, here are a few of the valuables we learned that might help you get some skin in the game:

1. Social media has many platforms and is valuable for building your child’s digital profile Colleges and company recruiters are using social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to check out the authenticity of student applications, get a feel for their ethics, politics, and overall standard of character as well as to find future candidates for employment, helping them quickly whittle down stacks of resumes without so much as a phone interview. Parents were encouraged to help facilitate their child’s digital presentation of self by creating accounts with them and walking them through the do’s and don’ts of healthy interactions online.
2. All predators need to hack your life is your name and birthday; not even your social is necessary anymore to highjack your financial existence. When you give out this information on Facebook (which most do) you are not their customer, you are their inventory and become very valuable to other companies. (This was my “I’m starting my own Village” moment)
3. Parents need to stay in the know (as much as possible) as to what’s coming into the social world of their children. Seguin shared some tips for doing that:

• Google your own child and see what’s out there for others to see (if anything)
• Invest in NetNanny or SafeEyes app to help you monitor and block your children from undesirable cites. Also, we discussed companies like Verizon and AT&T which have started providing family base management systems for parents to have which notify parents with an email and/or text daily as to exactly the kind of social interactions their child has been having, whether text, video, photo, or other. Verizon is mine, and I know it tells me when unknown numbers repeatedly call or are called. It gives me a check-in point with my children and raises their levels of accountability thereby helping them have an easier time making good choices to be careful and safe.
• Stay current on new apps -He listed for us some apps that are not safe for your children to have on their phone and suggested parents take on the attitude that the phones their children use belong to the parent since they pay for them and their usage. Seguin recommended regular and random checks. Some of the apps listed were: Ask.fm, shush, periscope, and Kik Messenger App designed to talk to complete strangers. He also showed us a pretty popular calculator app that masks as a true calculator functioning completely normal, but having a passcode that takes you into a secret vault of photos that can be stored there. The best way to do this is probably to google top apps from time to time and just read up, or directly ask your child to explain the validity and usefulness of apps you find on their phones.
• All in all, Seguin was not advocating that we are doomed and we might as well just accept it. Nor was it an option to go “build your own village on a deserted island,” but instead he was beating the drum loudly to say, “It is here. It is not going away. You can’t hide from it. You can’t run from it. If you ignore it or try to shield your children from it, they become the disadvantaged ones and could easily find themselves on the wrong end of negative social media targets.” It was very insightful and a good reminder to me as a parent that the best position I can take with my children on any topic is the one of being informed and involved.