Internet lesson scares teens into suppression

PATRICK HAMILTON/The Nelson Mail

FACTS OF LIFE: Waimea College students during their internet safety lesson yesterday.

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Teenagers today will leave so much information online that they will be the first generation whose grandchildren can easily research them.

But that information will never go away, Simulate2educate educator John Parsons warned a group of Waimea College students yesterday during an internet safety lesson.

Mr Parsons and Nelson IT lecturer Ryan Clarke created Simulate2educate to teach young people how easy it was to gather personal information such as licence plates, addresses and details of expensive possessions from seemingly innocuous pictures and details shared online.

The students learned how easy it was for an employer to find incriminating pictures, a determined criminal to rob homes, or a sexual predator to target young people using the internet.

Mr Parsons said as well as being aware of what they posted online, young people also had to be aware of "sexting" – taking sexually explicit photos on cellphones and cameras that could easily be shared with others.

He cited the example of 13-year-old American girl Hope Witsell, who last year committed suicide after a topless image was shared with her boyfriend's friends.

Last year, Mr Parsons and Mr Clarke trialled their course with 30 Year 10 Waimea College students. Still in the development stage, they are looking for corporate backing for the programme so they can take it to schools around New Zealand.

Waimea College health and physical education teacher Leigh Morgan said her students had been "shocked" at how easy it was for information to be accessed and passed on.

"We had people shutting down their Facebook accounts and re-publishing them more appropriately," Miss Morgan said.

Waimea College student Tepuni Pihema, 14, said he hadn't been aware of how easy it was to gather clues from information transmitted electronically. "I think you have to be a lot more careful on the internet and what you're posting."

He learned it was also important to ask people for their permission before posting anything that related to them.

Kaitlyn Stringer, 14, and Ashleigh Inch, 14, said they were both going to be more cautious in future when using the internet.

"We're all going to have to delete our personal information now," Kaitlyn said.

Independent Nursing Practice director Annette Milligan said when she saw what Mr Parsons and Mr Clark had developed she thought "hooray".

"Here is something that will give young people skills to be thoughtful about what they send and receive and about what they do when they become aware of things that are damaging to themselves and other people," Ms Milligan said.

As a nurse she routinely saw young people visiting the practice for the emergency contraceptive pill.

She was aware some of them had made "utterly alarming decisions" about taking and sending images of themselves.

"[They have been] photographing their own genitalia and emailing or texting that ... it's often done in a state of inebriation with very little thought as to the long-term consequences."

She said the ease with which such images could be traded was "phenomenal".

"I'm really concerned about the impact that has on a person's future and what that might mean down the track."

She had heard of a 22-year-old woman who had come "within a whisker" of losing her job because of a photo a friend posted on Facebook. She had also avoided interviewing job candidates because of what she found when she googled them.

Ms Milligan thought the programme should be mandatory for every young person.

"Young people haven't had a chance to prove who they are by other means and are going to carry around the ramifications of this for a lot longer, but it's also about organisations, the effect on insurance policies, and businesses that can be brought into disrepute," she said.

- © Fairfax NZ News