Herald on Sunday editorial: Schools rising to the digital challenge

The e-education courses now coming into intermediate schools might produce a generation more careful about what they post. Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion

Children today can be familiar with computers by the time they learn to walk. They quickly understand how to manipulate images on a touch-screen and play video games.

Many will be more familiar with digital devices than they are with books by the time they start school. So it is good to report today that schools are teaching them, almost as soon as they can write, how to recognise the dangers that lurk online.

Stranger danger is the obvious one, as it is in their physical environment. They are told they should not be drawn into conversation online with anyone they do not know in real life and they are warned never to reveal personal information or send photos of themselves to someone they do not know.

As with physical dangers, it is important these messages are presented in a way that does not leave children afraid of their own shadows. They ought to be helped to enjoy their iPads and phones safely but not with fear. If they can clearly recognise warning signs they should find it easy to avoid risks while taking full advantage of the internet's educational riches.

As they grew a little older, approaching intermediate age, they will come into contact with social media. They will want a personal bulletin board like their friends. The e-education courses now coming into intermediate schools might produce a generation more careful about what they post, able to avoid the embarrassing pitfalls today's users should know enough to avoid.

Digital communications are a potent combination of telephones and the print word. They have the speed of a phone and the permanence of print. Thoughtless remarks can be emailed in a moment and last forever. Offensive messages on paper may be seen by nobody but the victim, ripped up and forgotten. The same message on email or twitter can easily be copied to others, go viral, and a victim can never be confident they are completely deleted.

Perhaps the most important lesson for those growing up in the digital age is the potential permanence of anything they put online. It remains far more visible than a paper archive that a researcher might find with effort.

Online search engines are capable of finding it in a fraction of the time and of throwing it up when it is not called for.

We are in a primitive first stage of digital life, prone to the technology's exploitation by bullies, spies, perverts, hackers and scammers. Law is just setting out on a quest to catch up.

Education, too, has a vital role. Its task is to see that the next digital generation is safer, more sensitive to the risks and reach of the medium, and leave room in their lives for real human contact.