Digital Smarts - Kids' Digital Footprint Shows the Mental Strain Brought on by the Virus

When schools abruptly closed and shifted to remote instruction in the spring, Paget Hetherington, vice president of marketing at Gaggle, found changes in students' behavior stemming from increased stress and hardship from the coronavirus pandemic. Gaggle is a digital platform that monitors content on school-owned devices and applications for indicators of potentially harmful behavior. In an interview, Hetherington says the platform detected increased digital device use after school hours and a 21% increase in explicit content - sexual photos, pornographic images or threatening sexual assault - among minors. There was also an increase in kids reaching out to their teachers and students in their classes to report abuse in the home during the pandemic. Students reported abuse by parents, caregivers, and others -- even siblings. Four of the five highest weeks of reported abuse occurred from mid-March to mid-May. Imminent threats, defined as a life in danger or threat to the well-being of a person, increased 79% compared to previous weeks in the year when students were in school. While critics sometimes worry about the role that Gaggle and other companies have in violating student privacy, Gaggle does not monitor students’ personal email or social media accounts. Gaggle only monitors information posted and written using school computers and school-provided G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 accounts, including Docs, Email, Slides, Calendar, Hangouts/Teams, Yammer and so forth. Gaggle also has a track record of lives they have saved through their monitoring process.