Rachael Es­pinet

The evo­lu­tion of the In­ter­net is cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties but al­so new risks for par­ents, teach­ers and young peo­ple.

With the rapid rise of the mo­bile In­ter­net and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of smart­phones and oth­er In­ter­net-con­nect­ed mo­bile de­vices, to­day's class­rooms are a nexus for cy­ber crime, cy­ber bul­ly­ing and sex­ting. Over­com­ing this new breed of chal­lenges is a task re­quir­ing a com­plex set of ap­proach­es, says Daren Dho­ray, project leader of Cy­ber Safe T&T, an ini­tia­tive geared to­wards teach­ing stu­dents safe web prac­tices.

In re­sponse to the grow­ing num­ber of ex­plic­it videos cap­tured in school­yards and then shared on pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia web­sites such as YouTube, there have been calls from ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers to ban smart de­vices from school com­pounds.

But Dho­ray said sim­ply out­law­ing iPads and cell phones won't deal with the re­al prob­lem. Be­cause they are sur­round­ed by so many ways to slip up with tech­nol­o­gy, "we can­not risk not talk­ing to stu­dents about the dan­gers," Dho­ray said.

"The tech­nol­o­gy is sim­ply the ve­hi­cle. What we have to do, both par­ents and teach­ers, is teach the val­ues to stu­dents so that they would not be caught in a vi­ral video," Dho­ray said.

An­oth­er key part of the re­sponse, Dho­ray said, is for par­ents and teach­ers to get more fa­mil­iar with the ar­ray of hard­ware and rapid­ly chang­ing soft­ware at young peo­ple's dis­pos­al.

"Par­ents need to un­der­stand the tech­nol­o­gy be­fore they im­ple­ment it," he said, adding, "the old­er gen­er­a­tion are not ex­act­ly tech­no-na­tives."

For ex­am­ple, while there is soft­ware avail­able for par­ents and schools to block harm­ful sites, many chil­dren are able to find "back doors" to those sites and get around the parental block placed on the com­put­ers, he said.

Net­work op­er­a­tors and In­ter­net ser­vice providers can al­so re­strict In­ter­net ac­cess to pro­tect young peo­ple, but with mo­bile de­vices pro­vid­ing such di­rect ac­cess to open Wi-Fi net­works, young peo­ple can still very eas­i­ly ac­cess ex­plic­it web­sites and up­load in­ap­pro­pri­ate ma­te­r­i­al.

The en­act­ing of the Cy­ber­crime Bill, Dho­ray said, would help to pro­tect chil­dren and con­vict cy­ber­bul­lies and cy­ber preda­tors who share sex videos and child pornog­ra­phy.

"The coun­try is in dire need of the Cy­ber­crime Bill or re­al­ly the Cy­ber­crime Act. The Cy­ber­crime Bill will cause many of these vi­ral videos to be recog­nised legal­ly as defama­tion of char­ac­ter and cy­ber bul­ly­ing," he said.

The Bill, Dho­ray hoped, would al­low for le­gal ac­tion to be tak­en against any­one who films and spreads a video or im­age that would cause ill to an in­di­vid­ual.

In the mean­time, the ul­ti­mate ad­vice to avoid get­ting caught in an on­line scan­dal is re­al­ly sim­ple, Dho­ray said. Just don't record any in­crim­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion in the first place.

"This is­sue has been go­ing on for a while. Our ad­vice has al­ways been don't post, don't take the video out. At some point in time it may resur­face, and it could haunt you."

Long tail

Last month, vi­ral videos once again hit the head­lines of the lo­cal news. In one case, a woman was caught on cam­era phone van­dal­is­ing a Toy­ota Hilux on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook.

An­oth­er video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia was of two stu­dents from a To­ba­go sec­ondary school en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ties. While this video was four years old, it resur­faced nu­mer­ous times on­line.Not­ing that the video of the stu­dents from To­ba­go was four years old, Dho­ray said the fact that it resur­faced was ex­act­ly the rea­son why peo­ple must prac­tice cau­tion while tak­ing per­son­al pho­tos.

"Now their rep­u­ta­tion is tar­nished by the video. They both are no longer in school. They could now lose their job. Some peo­ple lost their schol­ar­ships be­cause of sex video scan­dals," Dho­ray said.

"We keep on say­ing, what you would not want to be seen, you should not put up on­line."