Legislating our Students' Internet Usage: How much can we actually protect them? Or do the laws we push ignite resistance?

(High Country Press)

In the youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzu2XSSevPU) discussing legislations made in order to keep children safe as they use the internet, the presenter makes a point regarding educators making their classes more engaging so students are less likely to engage in unwanted behaviors online, such as trading nude pictures of minors via cellular devices because it is considered trading child pornography. While I do think this is incredibly important, I think that sometimes what our students do on their phones is out of our hands because their use of cell phones is often hard enough to control, let alone the content they are viewing on them. Therefore, I think it is essential that schools work to implement the use of service interrupters so that students cannot access and post or send content to social media, sms, or other web platforms while in classes. I remember having these in my high school and not being able to access or send information while in certain classrooms with the jammers nearby. Individual schools' wifi networks may be provided, but students' cellular data and service providers operate on their own platform outside of what the school provides. This reminds me of an article I recently read on NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/12/570145408/france-moves-to-ban-students-from-using-cellphones-in-schools , which discusses its move to ban the use of cell phones in schools, effective next year. Outside of break periods, students will have to turn in their cell phones to the school so that they will not become a distraction during classes. When I worked with high schoolers, I constantly fought for something similar in my school, but administration continually told me that they wouldn't try to do something like this because taking student property from them was "too much of a liability" and they "didn't want to have to be responsible for student belongings" in the event that anything were to happen. However, I would argue that this actually did more of a disservice to the learning environment (not to forget to mention I worked in an alternative high school where student engagement was already lower than other schools).

Aside from this, Danah Boyd's comment regarding COPPA teaching children to lie because "on the internet all children are 14," I would agree. Age verification processes and online auditing is very lax. It only takes figuring out the appropriate birthday(s) in order to figure out how to gain access to online resources that they otherwise would not be able to access. The internet is a phenomenal tool and resource, yet can be incredibly dangerous if we do not take the time to educate our children. This is kind of a double-edged sword because sometimes the more we attempt to keep children away from material online, the harder they will work to figure out how to access it.