Written by Jersey Denise Manahan

I got my first phone by beating my dad to a game of Subway Surfers. As a nine-year-old kid who wanted to grow up fast, I treated every adult around me as a role model. They were always glued to their phones doing God knows what. They would bring it to the bathroom and use it while cooking— their phones in one hand and a ladle in the other. Having my first phone made me feel like I was walking towards a bright light, but I was really walking towards the dark side.

I grew up in an “unconsciously liberated” community. My parents, aunts, and uncles wanted to be strict regarding gadget usage, but they were mostly away, so they couldn’t closely monitor what I was doing online. I was the smart and independent kid. I was always mindful of what I was doing. I wouldn’t even dare to sneak out. I never had a secret relationship. And because of that, no one ever cared what I was doing on my phone because me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing has about the same odds as time traveling. By the time I was 15 years old, I had talked to hundreds of people online. I was very cautious. I had a set of personal ground rules when talking to a stranger online: Never give out your name and age, never send photos of yourself, and never tell people where you live. Luckily, I was never harmed. That’s partly because of how cautious I was, but also because I wasn’t exposed to bad people. But this isn’t the case for most kids my age. 

Surfing online has made me realize one thing: the internet has got to be the grayest invention of mankind. It holds every piece of information at our expense; just one click, and it’s on the tip of our finger. If we’re being honest, it’s probably the third thing that makes the world go round, right after the earth’s gravitational field’s relationship with the elliptical orbit and the wonders of nature and the ecosystem. 

It’s funny how the blackness and whiteness of the internet work. While someone out there is warning a person about possibly having skin cancer just because they saw a suspicious mole on his back, someone out there sends unsolicited photos of their appendage to people who didn’t ask for it. In one part of the world, a gamer saved her online friend, who lived five thousand miles away, by calling emergency services because she sensed her friend was having a seizure. In another part of the world, a kid is contemplating his life because of one disparaging remark by someone they don’t even know. No matter how cautious you are, no matter how much you try to stay on the white side of the internet, its dark side will come looming like spilled water swarming the contents of the table one by one.

It’s the internet’s nature to make us curious users. I’ve had my fair share of diving into sites I wasn’t supposed to, and here’s what I have to impart to today’s generation.

It’s hard to learn about things that bother us, and it’ll be easier to turn a blind eye, but that’s simply ignorance and believing we’re living in a dystopian world where these things don’t exist. Instead, do yourself a favor and use the internet as a tool to discover the truth, no matter how unsettling it may be. You’ve got all the world’s editions of encyclopedias in front of you, and your reluctance to learn about human rights, historical revisionism, and the dark truth about adult entertainment slowly dooms this generation.

I wish I had people to protect me from the bad people on the internet, but I’m glad no one did because it forced me to know where to look and what to look for. It taught me what to believe and what not to believe. It taught me to distinguish right from wrong, truth from lies, and facts from mis-and-disinformation. The only thing I’m hoping for now is to have the children navigate the internet safely. So, when your kid asks you about a topic you believe they’re too young to know about, dare to swallow the awkwardness and explain it to them. Because who knows where they’ll end up when they try to look for the answers themselves? They’ll resort to the thousands of sites you tried to steer them clear off. 

If you go online and look into internet safety, you’ll get hundreds of sites telling you to make sure your passwords are strong and consist of 12 letters and special characters. It’ll tell you to pay attention to software updates, keep your personal information private, and 20 more tips on staying safe online, but let me put it in a way most young adults would understand.

I advise you to navigate the internet as if you were exploring the streets of Manila. Regularly changing your passwords serves as your mace. Two-factor authentications equate to confirming your Grab driver’s identity and ensuring the child lock is not activated before getting in his vehicle. Practice safe browsing the same way you wouldn’t go down an unfamiliar road at night. Be careful of what you download the same way you wouldn’t accept an object from a stranger. Finally, keep your antivirus program updated by switching up your routines and routes.

It’s understandable and natural for you to want to explore every crevice of the internet but do so with vigilance. There is no public roster that indicates who’s going to be the victim of today’s cyber crimes. It’s easy for people to be careless and disrespectful online because they have their screen names to hide behind. But in the real world, would you have the guts to slander someone? To steal their possessions? To entertain yourself without the subject’s consent? To tell someone what part of their body they need cosmetic surgery on? The internet’s harm will keep finding its way to people, but you have the power to dodge it.

The internet is a marvel, but it’s also a double-ended sword. An informed user is more powerful than a restless doltish exploiter.