Safer Internet Day (SID) is organized by Insafe in February of each year to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and young people across the world.
Tuesday, February 10th, Connect Safely will be hosting Safer Internet Day on the campus of Facebook in Menlo Park, California. There will be a keynote address by California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris and remarks from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as well as three educational panels. This event is free and open to the public. (Pre-registration is required to attend in-person.) You will also be able to watch a live stream at 1:15 pm Pacific (4:15 Eastern) on Tuesday, February 10th.
What are the panels about?
- It opens with a topic I am very passionate about, we hear a lot about bullying, trolling and social cruelty, but it goes so much deeper. The first panel will explore this.
“Beyond Bullying: Dealing with Trolling & Social Cruelty” focusing on serious issues that plague the Internet and social networks. And, yes, there will be talk about privacy and security challenges that should be on everyone’s mind now that the details of our personal, social and financial lives, along with our health care and school records, are increasingly being stored on cloud servers. Even our bodies are being connected to the Internet as we strap on smartwatches that transmit data about our pulse and perspiration rates along with other bodily functions to cloud servers that could be vulnerable to all sorts of compromises.
But even as we share the best advice from industry, government and nonprofit leaders, we will remember that the title of our event is “Safer” Internet Day, not “Safe” Internet Day. That’s because no amount of precautions can possibly guarantee nothing will go wrong any more than air bags, seat belts and even safe driving can prevent all car accidents.
- Panel two is one that most everyone can be excited about especially in today’s society offline as well as online:
“Using Technology to Effect Social Change” because it will cover how today’s connected devices are helping people all over the planet make small and large changes to improve their lives. Whether it’s toppling oppressive regimes, helping to make local law enforcement more sensitive to the needs of their communities, or getting a traffic light installed in a busy intersection, activists around the world have found social media and mobile technology to be a powerful tool to revive that old sixties slogan, “Power to the People.”
- The third panel wraps it up with the industry leaders in Internet safety being moderated by Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) founder and CEO, Stephen Balkam.
No matter who you are, if you use the Internet or a mobile phone, there is always something new you can learn about online safety. Like the Internet that is always changing, we need to be flexible and open-minded to change with it.
Help spread the word to others. Visit www.connectsafely.org for more information, Tweet using hashtag #SIDUS15.
