The Privacy Educators Program (PEP), run by Fordham’s Center on Law and Information Policy, was quoted in The West Side Rag in an article on internet privacy and children.
The pandemic forced hundreds of thousands of students to start using electronic devices at earlier ages than ever before. An organization designed to alert young people to the dangers on the Internet is hoping to train them at an earlier age.
The Privacy Educators Program (PEP), run by Fordham’s Center on Law and Information Policy, seeks to inform students about the importance of online privacy before they adopt bad habits, said its director Andrea Flink, a Senior Fellow at the center: “Internet privacy is really an abstract concept and something that needs to be taught young.” The program, which is taught by Fordham law students, has been introduced to multiple elementary schools, including PS 191 on West 61st Street.
The program was started in 2013 and was originally taught to seventh graders. But the educators realized that by the time these students were in middle school, they had already become accustomed to some of the exact tendencies that PEP was advising against. As a result, the program is now working with 4th and 5th graders.
