Opinion
College & Workforce Readiness Opinion

Personal Privacy Is a Concern for All Tech Users

By Patrick Larkin — February 08, 2017 1 min read
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Those of us who rely heavily on technology on a daily basis need to learn more about what we give up when we sign off on the “Terms of Service” for all the online resources we utilize.

We need to pause and think about the details of our lives that we are giving away to companies, simply for the permission to access their products. As adults, we need to do this so that we can get our students to do the same.

While we all care about privacy, we aren’t always taking online steps that reflect this. It’s become normal to give away the rights to our personal information in order to sign up for something online.

It is imperative that we delve into this area so we can pass this information on to our students, with context.

One way to address this is by signing up for a one-week series called the Privacy Paradox, from Manoush Zomorodi and her team at public radio podcast Note to Self. The series is designed to help us reflect on what we are doing when we reveal our personal information in so many places on the Internet and will outline concrete steps to allow us to take back a bit of the control we have given away.

Manoush describes this as “a plan to take back your online life and control your digital information.” Even if you did not start at the beginning of the week, you can start this one-week series.

As educators we must focus on the ramifications of these actions and help students understand the impact that our need for online instant gratification can have long term. While signing on to the latest social media tool may make you feel like you are part of the in-crowd, the impact down the road may leave you looking at your own personal information as an outsider.

The opinions expressed in Reinventing K-12 Learning are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.