Francesca Rios '02, who attended Rye Country Day from K - 12, returned to campus to share her perspectives on internet safety and social media with fourth - eighth grade students, as well as parents. As the an assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's cybercrime division, Francesca investigates and prosecutes crimes involving hacking and network intrusions, cyber-frauds, and all manner of schemes where computers or the internet are used to commit or conceal crimes.

In her presentation, Francesca encouraged students to always remember three things:

• everything on social media is public;
• everything on social media is permanent;
• and everything on social media is owned by someone else.

Francesca shared how these three messages had an impact on her cases during her years as an assistant district attorney. Her talk reinforced the lessons about online safety that students learn in Ms. Donahue's Middle School SEEK class, in Mr. Turner's Lower School computer class, and in Ms. Love's Lower School Library class. Francesca also presented useful information for parents, inviting them to model proper social media usage for their children and encouraging them to have conversations regularly about this topic.

Thank you, Francesca, for your visit!

Some further resources for parents that may be helpful in establishing boundaries and rules for social media use at home may be found at:

• Internet Safety Concepts, a company started by a retired law enforcement officer who used to investigate online crimes:
  • General parent information with details about all the apps and how they work: https://internetsafetyconcepts.com/parents/
  • Family Cell Phone Usage Contract: http://internetsafetyconcepts.com/wp-content/uploa...
  • List of parental app monitoring possibilities: http://internetsafetyconcepts.com/wp-content/uploa...
• CommonSense Media parent reviews for apps: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/
• Apple built-in parental tools that require approval before your child can install any new apps: https://www.apple.com/family-sharing/