Student’s innocence makes them targets of those who know parental protection is not guaranteed.
Parents being offered parental control options are receiving a false sense of security. ChatGPT just announced a new feature. Some parents are cheering. I am cautioning parents to not feel their children are protected.
The only way to truly protect users is to help them understand the motives of APP creators and the ethics issues related to their products. Offering simple to use techniques that cut their workload are very enticing to today’s generation. Quicker, Easier, Faster are the target words of developers.
Students who see a man on a deadline turning to Artificial Intelligence to create a presentation to sell a product or idea in seconds is very appealing. Unethical, because it isn’t their creation, but they don’t consider how they are misrepresenting themselves. This is an ethics issue they need to consider.
Students need to understand the purpose of the firewalls. With every new protection, there are ways to break through the fire walls and students as young as 8 years old have broken through every one of them. If they understand the firewall is like the deadbolt in our homes. It keeps unwanted unethical and manipulative users out.
We thought our students were safe with the expensive firewall our school installed. Within a month, three middle school inquisitive students broke through it. It took months for this to be discovered.
A third-grade girl in my class had all devices removed from her access because she was addicted to an educational game. It turned out the players could buy tokens to pass tests, so their parents thought they were progressing because they were passing all the tests. When one parent discovered strange charges to her credit card, she removed all the devices. The only device available to this student was the school issued Chrome Book. The parents were lulled into a false sense of security, because it was school issued. After a few weeks of having hacked into the game on her Chrome book, she began manifesting signs of depression. She couldn’t stop playing, because she was afraid of being a ‘Noob’ and losing the daily prizes offered by logging on each day. She was overheard sharing how she thought she would be in trouble because she used her mother’s credit card. We discovered she, an eight-year-old, broke through the firewall of the Chromebook.
The only way to truly protect users is to not give them a device until they are old enough to recognize when they are being manipulated. The players are approached in innocent looking games to buy virtual clothing, so they don’t look like a “Noob.” I can only assume that is not cool. They are led to believe that the FREE outfits will make them a target of bullying. Eight-year-olds have no idea who the player is that is actually the bully making money off of their innocence.
Essential Knowledge for All Users
Training in Advertising Strategies
Discussion of Ethics of Using Apps to Create What Appears to Be Original Work
The Purpose of Firewalls
Propaganda Techniques