Staying safe online

Three short pages about the internet you already use — on a phone, on a computer, on the TV, wherever you are. The videos you watch, the places where other people can message you, and AI chatbots. Each page explains how that thing is built and what it is built to get you to do, because knowing how something works is what makes you hard to fool. None of them tell you to throw anything in a lake.

• The videos you watch Why the people on YouTube and TikTok look like they have a better life than you, and why that is not a fair comparison. “If it makes me feel bad about myself, it is time to put it down and go do something real.”
• Where people can reach you Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, group chats. Good things, with one difference that changes everything: other people can get to you. “I never have to answer. I can leave any conversation, any time, without a reason.”
• AI chatbots If you already use one for homework or out of curiosity: what it actually is, why it is confidently wrong, and the one thing it can never be. “If it matters, I check it with a person.”

Before you start

Nobody wrote these because you are in trouble, and nobody is going to ask you questions about them afterwards. All of this is used every day by people who are perfectly happy and perfectly fine. The point is that every one of these things was built by a company, with goals of its own, and you are allowed to know what those are.

You can read them in any order. Ten minutes each, at most.

These pages are maintained by the Sioux Falls South Dakota Stake. This is not an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.