ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Allentown Police Department is sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of social media.<\/p>\n
Officers are teaming up with the Allentown School District and charter schools to visit classrooms and teach students about online safety.<\/p>\n
“I’m hoping to learn the ways that I can avoid being anything like cyber bullying or online predators,” said Arya, a 5th grader at Lehigh Parkway Elementary School.<\/p>\n
5th graders at Lehigh Parkway Elementary School are getting an important lesson from Allentown Police Officers.<\/p>\n
“Most of my classmates, they are on social media,” Naila. a 5th grader at Lehigh Parkway Elementary School.<\/p>\n
“You can be attacked or even bullied on social media even when you’re not knowing it,” Arya said.<\/p>\n
All eyes are on Crime Prevention Detective Luiz Garcia, who stands front of and center of the classroom.<\/p>\n
“When a police officer comes in and connects with them, they kind of get a little bit more awareness. And they’re like, ‘oh my god, a police officer is coming’, and they might remember those things,” Garcia said.<\/p>\n
It’s another year in the books for Garcia, who has prepared an hour long presentation and a bag of prizes for students to engage in the session that highlights the dangers of cyberbullying, online predators, and GPS\/location settings.<\/p>\n
Garcia also discussed inappropriate content and online crimes that could be committed.<\/p>\n
“I always ask them, ‘what’s one thing that you remember?’ And they talk about online predators you know, not to talk to people that you don’t know, to be aware, to ask your parents about the apps and communicate better with your family,” Garcia said.<\/p>\n
The program is offered to all 5th graders in the Allentown School District and charter schools.<\/p>\n
But the longtime police officer is stressing the importance of continued conversations outside of the classroom.<\/p>\n
“The advice is, just as a parent, as you just try to get into, you know, their devices and make sure you’re monitoring their devices. Let them know that it’s a privilege to have a device,” Garcia said.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy to learn. I’m learning the ways to avoid cyberbullying,” said Arya.<\/p>\n
Garcia and the other officers will be visiting Allentown School District elementary schools and charter schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Allentown Police Department is sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of social media.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[719,153,155,154,6515,6514,3652],"class_list":["post-7420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown-school-district","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-online-crimes","tag-online-safety","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}