15.9.2021

 

Vulnerable vs secured

 

It is the current trend now to go social media to share one’s daily life/ routine/ jokes/ thoughts and everything else  . Short and concise. With music , without music . words of advice, experiences. The current popular platform is the tik tok, the Instagram, the Facebook, the twitter, the You Tube,  to name a few that I am aware of. They may be many  more out there. It is  the in thing to share  our daily stories with our friends and our followers . At times you hope that your readers would read and then give a thumbs up, or a like to your message. Positive  or negative feedbacks .  One has to be prepared for all that. And also to be prepared for stalkers out there. They would put in their request to be your follower especially on your FB and Instagram account. It is best to do a little background check just by looking at their account. Other times than not ( through my experience ) these people  are just out to accomplish their personal agenda. Mind you, this is not  just confined to people of the opposite gender but also  of people of your own gender.

 

Once I received an email from a lady living in the US . On her first mail to me ,she sent a photo of herself with her husband. She claimed I was her former school mate in the primary school. She mentioned the name of the school ( I was there for short 5 months or so). Of course I did not think further but happily replied to that mail. We had a few exchange of messages. But sometime during the course of the exchanged messages she asked  me to not share our conversations with anyone else because she claimed to be a private person. What intrigued me was when she asked me how I looked like. And did I have a class photo to share? That triggered me to  ask her to name  a few other  of classmates. But she did not reply to their request. Only then did I think that there must be something more to this new found old classmate . Is this some kind of build-up to something more in the near future?  A trap of some kind? A lot of questions and thoughts were running through my mind.. Is this person genuinely my schoolmate when she could not provide further information  that I asked for? So I stopped answering her mails. Lesson learnt. 

 

But having said that,  one need do nothing ( i.e. disclosing personal information on the social media ) and still receive lots of junk mails. Just a few days ago, I decided to empty my mail box . There were many unopened mails from as far back as 2010. During those early  years of 2010s, I moved job from the school level to the ministry level. The main focus then was learning the ropes of the new position as a senior lecture, attending observation classes , preparing lessons for heads of schools and so on. There was hardly time to look at all these mails. By then I was regularly on the office mail box . Soon enough the number of unopened mails increased .

 

Mind you, had I opened those mails when I first received, I would have been a millionaire by now! Offers of tons of money from many persons from across the globe. Apparently one person wrote to inform that  I have won about a million US dollars, while from another email, I was offered to handle the import of goods and for that the amount offered was  beyond my wildest dreams! I supposed if I was at my most vulnerable self , in dire straits , I would have replied and probably tried  my luck! And I know of people who have fallen into these traps of scammed and dubious offerings only to realise that this is all one big scam  by people out there out to use us for their benefits. I believe the modus operandi would be first to offer money but eventually it would the victims who had to deposit money in order to get more money? And most times, victims are too embarrassed to come up front and confessed they have been duped. In the more serious crimes , where the victims were roped to act as camel drugs transporters and later caught and given maximum punishment. Somehow we read of  victims that were highlighted but the predators  were still free to move on to the next prey. 

 

It’s a dangerous world out there. All the more if the victims are our young children and grandchildren.  How do we protect our children, our young ones from falling into these traps. Of course , for the young kids, it is not about money but the paedophiles that prey on children to satisfy their sexual needs and  these exploitation is said to happen either online  on the internet or offline where reports of offenders with ways and means to lure the children to fall into their traps.  According to a New York Times investigation, “Child victims are at far greater risk of future substance abuse, depression, persistent traumatic stress or criminal aggression than of becoming molesters.”

 

As we move into the digital world and with our children being exposed to everything online, how much screen time is just right for your child? Every digital parent alive worries about too much time online.  Issues on cyberbullying and internet safety ranked among the top concerns of parents. But having said that there are many benefits in terms of positive experience  for most children . A lot of articles online give examples of these positive impacts.  

 

So how do we parents monitor what our children are up to when we are away at work ? 

Apparently, there many monitoring apps  out there in the market with their functionality varies across the board . Some apps allow parents to keep track of their kid’s activities and location, but there some that do not monitor social media of any kind.

 

Perhaps parents with school going children may want to consider to shop around and see the options available and perhaps it is time to have one installed for all the devices available in our homes. And I know of parents who have their own ways of monitoring their kids’ activities online but many of us who have not  done so , perhaps this is a good time to do so. The current pandemics  has in a way revolutionised our methods of teaching and learning. Maybe when the time comes for normal schooling once again, these new methods of online t&c may be incorporated as part of the new norm in educating a child. The way forward .

 

There is a website that gives an overall insight of the monitoring apps. I find this website gives quite a comprehensive picture of web site controlling and the types of apps that are available in 2021.  Do check this website for those who would like to have more information

https://sea.pcmag.com/parental-control-monitoring-products/13169/the-best-parental-control-software-for-2020

 

There are more things that needed to be done in order to make this world a safer place for our future generations.  How do we create a safer, more resilient world for future generations? This is a very broad topic. So many things to look into, so many steps to make. It is not just about what is being discussed in this current writing but  it composes many other issues that is plaguing the earth and its habitants. Issues like climate change, growing poverty, hunger, terrorism and many more. It would be nice to leave this world a little  better than you found it and when your turn comes you can die happy in feeling that any rate . 

 

So where do you start. To quote a man by the name of Scott Sorrell ‘ You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person’