[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to our very first episode of digital dominoes. We're here to figure out today's tech so we can make a better future. I'm Angeline Corvaglia, but you can call me Data Girl. I'm super excited to dive into how each little piece of knowledge like a domino connects and impacts our digital world.

[00:00:27] The information and tips we're giving you here will help you not only stay safe on the internet but also thrive. Today we're going to talk about sharing information about ourselves online. What is safe to share? What we should be careful about and why. I have two very special guests today. One is Digital Defender Stella, an elementary school student who loves learning about AI and the digital world.

[00:00:51] The second is John Cavanaugh, aka Jet Haze, the Executive Director of the Plunk Foundation. A non-profit dedicated to bridging the digital divide in data privacy equity for children, families, veterans, and disadvantaged communities. Thank you both for being here. How are you doing today? Good. Fantastic.

[00:01:14] I'm excited. Wonderful. I'm, I'm excited to see what we discover in this first episode of Digital Dominoes. So Stella, are you excited to be on this show? Yes. Thank you. Do you know what the digital world is? No. Well, do you know what it means to be online? Yeah. Well, that's the digital world.

[00:01:36] Anytime that you're online, if you're on a phone or a tablet, or if you're on a TV and the TV goes to the internet, all of that is the digital world. There's lots more of the digital world, but that's the part of it that you use usually. What about you, John? Do you want to add anything about the digital world?

[00:01:53] Yeah, I think one way to view the digital world is that now over the past couple of years, it's been an extension of who we are. So, in school, when you get a job one day. And you're working, you will always be a part and have a digital footprint or an identity online. Some of that can be anonymous, like Jet Haze, as an example.

[00:02:23] And so there's a good reason to have some privacy behind that. And there's also good times to share your full identity at certain points, for example, at your work. That's a good point. Uh, so Stella. What about you? Is that your real name? No. No? And do you know why we're not using your real name? Yes. Yeah, what's the reason? Tell us. I'm still young. Young children can't use their, their name. Yeah, and, but, but I said my name at the beginning, right? I said Angeline Corvaglia and I said Jet's name, John. So what do you think the difference is? Can you tell us Jet, why we can't tell her name or we shouldn't tell her name and we're using ours?

[00:03:10] Yeah, a lot of times if you're using your full name and it goes for everybody, really, if you want to use your full name online, there are repercussions that come with that. And some people are better at handling that than others, and you want to be careful. When it comes to, if you're a child, such as Stella, and you're using your full name, there are lots of people who can take advantage of that situation.

[00:03:40] There are some things that can come about from peers, such as bullying. There can be strangers on the internet. I'm sure you've heard things about that. You know, staying safe from strangers, not only online, but in person, and the more information strangers have about you, the more they can contact you or try to talk to you.

[00:04:02] And if you want to stay safe online, it's best not to have all of that information available very easily. Does that make sense to you, Stella? No. No. Well, I appreciate your honesty. Well, let me ask you a different way. Do you know what social media is? No. Well, you know what Facebook is, right? Yeah. My dad always watches it.

[00:04:24] Yeah. Your mom told me that. That's why I know that you know what Facebook is. We were preparing for this. And so that is called social media and social media is a place where you go in the digital world and you talk to other people. Yeah? And it's not only on social media, also some games, there's a chance to talk to other people, any place where you can talk to another person, if they know your name, like what Jet said, if they know your name, then they can also do bad things for you, cause they're not always people that you know, there's not always people that you trust. And that's one reason why I know that you asked your mom before you want to know why children can't be on. Social media like Facebook and that's one of the reasons because there's a lot of people out there that it’s better not to know when you're a child because they're not always nice to say the least. Does that make more sense?

[00:05:24] Yes, it makes more sense Data Girl. Thank you and another thing that Jet said he was talking about bullying. Do you know what bullying is? No. You are very lucky not to know that. Yeah. That is a true blessing, uh, not to know that because it's something that usually at some point everyone has to go through and that's when people they're just mean to you for no reason.

[00:05:52] They'll make fun of you for something that you said or something that you wore and they'll just kind of continue making fun of you. That's called bullying. And it happens in real life, but it's a lot worse if it happens in the digital world because they are hidden behind the computer and it's a lot easier to say mean things to someone when you're not looking at their face. So the more information that you put online, the more that you give people a chance to do that, that bullying that you hopefully will not discover for a very long time.

[00:06:31] Yeah, very true. There's also something really interesting about online versus in person as well to your point Data Girl, is the fact that if you are in a physical place, if you're at your home, or if you're at school. Or if you're at a friend's house and something bad happens, you can leave, but online and all the information that you put out there stays forever.

[00:06:57] And anytime you log in or get back on Facebook, as an example, that information continues all hours of the day. So there's not much of an escape for it. And this is something that even adults struggle with as well.

[00:07:27] Another thing that's really interesting about what Jet said before. He talked about a digital footprint. And there was one Data Girl video about digital footprints. That anything you do online, that stays there, as Jet said. Can you imagine if you were doing your homework and you made a mistake and you couldn't fix it, it's just there, the mistake? Yeah. Every mistake that you make in your homework will stay there forever, like the pen doesn't erase. Yeah, like an unerasable pen. That's right. So the mistakes online are like the unerasable pens.

[00:07:49] They're just there. You just need to do everything again if you want to do it good. Yeah, that's right. But the problem is online you can't. It's just there. So you have it there. Yeah, you can't like, like, on paper you can take the paper, tear it up, and throw it away. Online, you can't do that. It's just there.

[00:08:09] That's why you have to be very careful. Because online is not paper. Online is not paper. That's right. It has a memory. It has an endless memory. Mm hmm. And another thing you might know about, since you're such a big fan of AI and online safety, if a person spends a lot of time online, the more time they spend, the more stuff they do, the more information that they get.

[00:08:34] And then you have AI that can collect that information. And do you know what AI does with that information? The things you put online are just like little puzzle pieces, and AI puts those puzzle pieces together. That's right. Very good. You've been studying, haven't you? Wow, I'm impressed. I knew that she knew that.

[00:08:57] She told me before, and I was just really impressed though, because that is really important information. Um, do you want to tell us more about that from a privacy perspective? Yeah, so AI has the ability to take all of the information, like we talked about in your digital footprint, because a lot of the websites such as Facebook, social media sites, Google, even Microsoft, Adobe, pretty much anything you want to use on your tablet.

[00:09:25] A lot of that is collected and gathered using the AI. And you can ask an AI various questions. And sometimes that data will show up some, some information that you would like to keep to yourself or private. Other times, it's not as clear cut, and it implies information about you that could be false. So sometimes, it may say something about you that's not true, but a lot of people will think it's true as well.

[00:09:55] Yeah. So it's just a mix. Sometimes they have the wrong puzzle pieces in order. Yeah, that's true. I mean, can you imagine if someone thinks that you're different than you really are? Like, this is a simple, it's a relatively simple thing. When you watch TV, what do you watch? Disney, Netflix, or Prime Video. So when you open Disney, you have some, some pictures on the TV, right?

[00:10:21] Yeah. It says your name. Or it says your code name. Hopefully anyone who's listening has not given their real name. They should give their code name to those places. But yeah, it's written there your name. Very good. And do you know why it's important that that name is there? That what you see on the screen, do you think everyone sees the same thing when they turn on Disney?

[00:10:42] No, they see different things. That's right. On YouTube or Facebook, they see, everyone sees the same thing. Do you want to comment on that, Jett? Yeah, actually, you would be surprised. It's different for everybody on YouTube, as well as Facebook. So Facebook is surrounded by what your likes and interests are, and the friends you, you can connect with various friends.

[00:11:14] So what those friends are saying. On YouTube, it's very much the same thing as Netflix. They take your viewing history into consideration. And they serve you videos that they think you would like. So for example, what is, what's one thing you like to do for fun? Not online at all. Like if you're going out somewhere doing something with friends, what do you like to do?

[00:11:35] I would like to play with them. Okay. Do you have a favorite food? Yeah. What is it? Pasta. Okay, so let's say you have on YouTube, you've been watching pasta videos on how to make pasta the best pasta in Italy as an example. But, let's say Jet doesn't like pasta. John loves pasta, but let's say Jet does not like pasta.

[00:12:00] Jet will not have any pasta videos on YouTube, unless it's a video of like, why pasta is bad for you, or something like that. But your YouTube might have all the pasta in the world, and you could watch all the shows you want on pasta. Yeah, imagine that. That you think, if you don't, and actually a lot of adults also think, That everybody sees the same thing on Facebook and YouTube.

[00:12:23] And that's actually one of the more important things to know, that whatever information you give, what everything you do online is going to show you something different. And you could easily think like Jet could think nobody in this world likes pasta. Why does pasta even exist? And you could think everybody in the world is only talking about pasta, and the both of you meet and you start talking and you think that you're living in different worlds. So, that's really important to know and all of that comes from what you've done, the information that you've given online. And one thing that's really interesting too is that something you do on Facebook, for example, or in your Google search or on your iPad can travel through the other apps as well.

[00:13:17] They're not just individual. So something you watch on YouTube, can determine what you might see on Facebook or another type of app, because your information is a footprint that gets carried throughout the internet. They talk to each other. They're like gossiping in the background, telling stories about you.

[00:13:39] Some videos are real and some videos are just invented. That's true. And it's hard to tell the difference sometimes, right? Yeah. Well, that's the safe thing about Disney. Usually you can tell on Disney what's invented and what's true, but on YouTube it's a different story. You make it see that it's real. On a Netflix, they, they make it see if it's real or not, but not on YouTube or Facebook.

[00:14:07] I don't know. Do you think that's true? I think so. I personally think that things like, like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney actually do a better job of filtering things, content that's appropriate or not because they're paid. But that's just my opinion. Do you know by chance, Jet? Yeah. So I think that that's a good point, actually.

[00:14:29] Typically on social media and YouTube, there can be a lot of fake videos or misinformation about what somebody said, about facts, about those types of things. On Netflix and Disney and various things like that, most of like a documentary or something will have a lot of research and informed things.

[00:14:54] So, yeah, it's generally more entertainment based. And they have the genre that follows it. So Stella, what do you think? Do you think it's a good idea that you don't watch YouTube?

[00:15:06] Yeah. So now we're coming to the end. So I want to ask you, Stella, to tell us, what did you learn today? One of the important things, if you would go right out, go to the park and tell your friends, I just had this great conversation. I learned all about being online and sharing information or not sharing information.

[00:15:27] What would you tell them? Well, I would tell them that only to share the things that to share and not share. I learned them on this video. Yeah, but what, what, for example, do you share and not share? I don't share, if you're little, like me, you, you don't share anything. If you're big, you just share your name.

[00:16:00] You don't share where you live unless you know them. If you know them, you can. If you don't know them, you can't, because you don't know them. You don't know if they're, if they're bandits, like AI bandits, or if they're just normal people. You don't know that. That's right. I think that's a very simple rule.

[00:16:30] We often make this very complicated, don't we, Jet? We.. It can be very simple, just don't share anything or just share your name and anything else is the exception. Maybe this needs to be just, that could be our rule, as simple as that. So I want to thank both of you for being here, having this conversation.

[00:16:52] We really want to know what you think. Do you agree or disagree? What are your experiences with your children and youth in your life? Please let us know and we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you, both of you. Thank you, and I just want to commend Stella for the knowledge that you have at your age to learn all about your digital footprint and understanding the difference between online and real life and understanding how AI works.

[00:17:19] That's really commendable. Yeah, because I watch all the videos and everything, all the stories and everything. Which ones? The Data Girl ones and, uh, the Ayla AI Girl ones. Thank you. And the stories, they don't show it just for listening.

[00:17:43] That's right. The stories are just for listening. No video. So I could not think of a better advertisement for Data Girl than what you just said. I think I'm going to have to reproduce that. Thank you so much, Stella. And there's also a kind of Facebook, but just about, about the safety of being on AI or data.

[00:18:11] That's something that you use? You go on something and then you see a picture of Data Girl, and you see writing Data Girl and friends. You click on it, and there's all these pictures, and if you click on one, there's different things.

[00:18:35] There's videos, games, stories. That's right. You're talking about the Data Girl and Friends website. Sorry, I was a little bit lost. Yeah. Look at, I have a marketing. I, I don't, Datagirl has a new marketing manager here. Yeah, that's right. It's the Datagirl and friends website with all that stuff. We'll, we'll add all the links to what Stella is very kindly saying in the show notes.

[00:19:08] Thank you so much. It's really the best thing that could happen to hear someone your age. Having benefit from the work that I do. I never want to stop watching. Watching the things you make. I never want to stop, but my mom likes me. Let me stop. Oh, your mom makes you stop? I'll have to talk to your mom to let you watch longer.

[00:19:33] Well, it's on Vimeo now, and there's no commercials on Vimeo. So, any parents out here listening, you can watch Dated Girl and Friends on Vimeo. Awesome. There's no commercials. I watch it too, Stella. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, it is. So, thanks again and have a wonderful rest of the day. Bye Take care. Thank you for coming, Jet. Thanks for having me, Stella and Data Girl.