Why You Should Be Careful When Using YouTube
Are you a high school student who loves to use YouTube? You may not only enjoy watching videos on YouTube, but you may also want to make and share your own videos. Even if you’re in high school, you can do this with YouTube, as YouTube allows people thirteen and older to share their videos. While this is fun to do, you need to be a little careful when making your YouTube videos.
Why You Should Be Careful When Using YouTube
Are you careful while making your YouTube videos?
If you’re wondering why you should do this, besides the obvious security concerns, you may be wondering why all this anxiety. What you may not realize is that your online content, including your YouTube videos, can be viewed by people associated with your school. These opinions can come from your friends, other classmates, and even school officials. That’s why it’s extremely important that you review your YouTube video content thoroughly and make sure that no harm will come to you later on.
Illegal activities are the most obvious when it comes to YouTube video content that you should avoid, especially if you’re a high school student. You don’t want to have a video of yourself or your friends drinking, using drugs, or committing another crime, no matter how trivial it may seem. As mentioned earlier, you never know who will come across your videos. The way high schools and gossip work today, if one of your classmates found a video of you on YouTube, they probably wouldn’t keep it to themselves; they will almost always share acquaintances with others.
Another type of video content you may want to avoid is content that is offensive to other students at your school. This type of content is most common in video blogs. Many internet users use video blogs to vent their frustrations or talk about their day. If you are a high school student, you may want to discuss school, your friends or classmates. While this is perfectly possible, you will want to avoid appearing too negative or even threatening. While you may be joking, the phrase “I’m so angry that I could kill him” might be taken out of context by someone watching your YouTube video, whether it’s a video blog or not.
As mentioned earlier, one of the many people who can watch your YouTube videos are your classmates or even your school officials. While we all want to believe that our classmates are cool, not all are. If one of your classmates finds a video on YouTube that they find offensive or unappealing, they can report it to your school. Speaking of your school, your school officials may even stumble upon your YouTube videos, as many schools now use the internet, or social networking sites, to monitor their students and activities. Having illegal activities documented in your YouTube videos can be problematic for you in more ways than one.
For YouTube videos containing documented illegal activities or threats, the consequences (if any) you experience will depend on the school district in question. It is not uncommon for school districts to suspend students they find to be engaging in illegal activities, even if those activities did not take place on school property. If you participate in extra-cyclical activities, including sports, you will find yourself temporarily or permanently suspended from all sports teams or other school-sponsored organizations. In serious cases, such as documenting threats to other students, it is not uncommon for authorities to be contacted.
As you can see, not thinking before shooting and sharing your videos on YouTube has serious consequences. All high school students, including you, are asked to consider their future before using YouTube as a source of fun entertainment.