February 2022 School Safety Blog

The old English teacher in me is coming out. Thinking of safety planning, COVID, masking, bullying, and digital safety among other things — especially these days — one vocabulary word keeps rolling around in my head: risk.  

We know what it is. Paraphrasing Merriam-Webster, “risk”, as a noun, means the possibility of loss or injury, peril. It can be someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard. And as a verb, risk means to expose to hazard or danger, or to incur risk or danger.

When we begin comprehensive safety planning, we do a risk assessment for our district or our school. What are those risks and hazards which we might have to deal with? How much peril are we in because of them? We establish Threat Assessment teams to help identify potential risk factors impacting the life of a student. We insure our assets and help provide safe learning environments with the help of our excellent statewide risk pools.

And so on…

Let’s change courses a bit. Let’s consider technology. For our districts and schools, we minimize risk with firewalls, network use agreements, filters, etc.  Let’s also consider students, what it means to be tech-savvy — especially for them. Think hardware. Software. Think Instagram, Snapchat, Badoo, and Discord. Think 4chan, Grindr, Omegle, ooVoo, and Reddit. Don’t forget Telegram, twitch, Vine, Seekrets, and 8kun. The list goes on and on.

Let’s go back to risk. Two additional risk-related concepts are dynamic risk and risk compensation. Simply defined, dynamic risk is when one risk triggers other, perhaps even more dangerous situations. Risk compensation happens when someone feels safe, feels less danger, and thus is willing to try something even more dangerous.

Now throw in brain development. Maturation. Growing up. Wetware. 

With all the platforms and apps, with all the devices at hand, with all the stories, challenges, games, and such, it’s no wonder that many tech-savvy young people think, “I can send this.” “I can be anonymous.”  “I can just delete it.” “Nobody will ever know it’s me.” “It’ll disappear in 10 seconds.” “It’ll be fun.” Bottom line, “I can risk it!”

Truth be told, though, it is very important for youth to understand that once something is sent, it is released into the ether. The sender loses control. The number of recipients can grow; the message can evolve, be modified, or adapted to someone else’s purposes. Also, it never disappears. It doesn’t go away. And the sender leaves digital footprints, breadcrumbs. That person is never really anonymous. Hidden, maybe. Hard to find, maybe. But not anonymous. 

What’s the message? How safe are you, really? Is it worth the risk? 

These would be good conversations to have with students.  It’s really hard to mop the net.