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16 August 2023
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – Where do you draw the line with privacy?
The Buhler school district has banned one app over privacy concerns for the new year.
“As a district, we have blocked this app from all of our devices from our network,” said Buhler USD 313 superintendent Cindy Couchman. “And that is due to the privacy concerns that we noticed right away, and our technology director pointed out.”
Concerns arose after the tech director for the school noticed some apps were sharing a lot of information and making it public. The latest app to get scrutiny is called Saturn – Time Together.
Tech experts say some app developers may have the best of intentions but also say sharing too much information can be a bad thing.
“Some of these apps… looks like they are grabbing a whole lot of information about these (school) kids and making it available to other people,” said tech expert Bill Ramsey. “So if I was stalking some student, I could pull a lot of information.”
Ramsey says there are a lot of popular apps that share your child’s location, and parents should be wary of kids using them without talking to parents about the app and its user agreements.
The Saturn app does have privacy controls offered, but the Buhler district has made the decision to not have it used in their schools.
Couchman says we all need to embrace technology. She also says digital tools are a wonderful way for kids to learn. But she says privacy concerns remain.
“We always say that we try not to block everything out there,” said Couchman. “We want students to be educated in how to make decisions for themselves and how to use technology appropriately. It’s true for adults, too. We make decisions on ‘Do we download this app? Do we share this information? What is the risk?'”
Ramsey says one of the ways to keep kids safe is to go over those user agreements on apps being downloaded. As a pragmatist, he also says most people do not read the fine print before downloading.
“Well, nobody reads the user agreements, unfortunately. They have all kinds of information in them,” said Ramsey. “Especially teenagers. They are not paying a bit of attention to those things. They don’t care because they don’t understand the ramifications of what they are about to do anyway.”
Couchman is encouraging parents, regardless of the app, to have a conversation with your kids.
“And we know that students are at the age where they might need some guidance in that and this,” said Couchman.