Momma Always Said Not To Talk To Strangers — But Now There’s Covid, Social Media, and Social Distancing?
By: Cybersecurity Meg
Tags: Covid 19, Cybersecurity, Technology, YouTube, Social Media

My mother was raised in a time where it was normal to spend your childhood running around the neighbourhood without supervision, and where it wasn’t necessary to lock the doors to your home. A time where the word “Internet” wouldn’t be found in the dictionary for another 30+ years, and a gallon of gas cost .29 cents.

When I was a child, the world was standing at the precipice of a technological revolution. Sending text messages still incurred individual charges, Apple was debuting its very first MacBook Pro, and BlackBerry devices were all the rage. For a mother who grew up doing research in textbooks found in the library as opposed to utilizing an online search engine, this posed a challenge. How was she to protect from the online world — a world her pre-teen child knew much more about than she did herself? A world that allowed for infinite opportunities, and yet posed so many dangers.

“Be cautious of strangers,” she would say. But she wouldn’t say much more, because the honest truth is that she didn’t know what more about the Internet to say. “Be careful of what you do online!” was lectured endlessly in school, posters educating against cyberbullying plastered on the walls throughout the hallways.

Queue 15 years of time eluding us, and here I am — the Cybersecurity Incident Response Manager for a Fortune Top 100 company. A woman who spends 10+ hours a day staring at a screen, born at a time when educators did not know how to educate on the ins and outs of the digital world.

I recently ventured outside of my comfort zone and created a Youtube channel. You know, the platform where people publicly deep-dive into their lives and disclose the inner-most workings of their minds? Where people of all ages and backgrounds head to share their interests, voice their opinions, or review products. I created a Youtube channel as a means of educating those in a manner in which I wish I had the opportunity to enjoy. I make videos about Cybersecurity — discussing how to get into the Cybersecurity field, how to obtain specific Cybersecurity certifications, videos about how women are consistently marginalized in a field that screams and begs for more employees. In 50 days of producing videos on Youtube, I garnered 2,300+ subscribers. People who want to support me, people who want to learn from me, people who want to have entire conversations with me (and I, them!) about anything and everything. This Youtube video making ordeal snowballed, and it snowballed quickly. One subscriber, then two, then five asked if I have a Twitter account. The answer in the beginning was a resounding “no”.

I always held out against Twitter. What meaningful message can you convey in 280 characters, I wondered? But with the increasing demand coming in from my new-found Youtube friends, I felt compelled to give the platform a chance. Not the “okay, I’ll succumb to it, and give a half-hearted attempt” chance, but the “if I’m going to do this, I’m going TO DO IT” chance. And that’s what I did. I’ve had my Twitter account for about 45 days now, and I’ve made close to 1,100 new Twitter followers. Wow.

At the beginning of creating my Youtube channel, I was extremely hesitant — like many — to put myself “out there”. Insert quote here about “once it’s on the Internet, it’s ON the Internet”. And as a Cybersecurity professional, I understand that. I struggled — and still do — about what level of myself to put out there, to share with anyone who stumbled across my content. I’ve received some backlash on my Youtube channel… some people who perhaps don’t like my message, or my mission, and so they attack whatever they can about me. It affected me the first few days, but now I’ve just learned to ignore it. 99% of feedback I receive is positive — people identifying with my career path, university students feeling empowered by someone their age being successful in the field, other Cybersecurity professionals happy that someone, anyone, is putting out content that helps demystify the field. And of course that 99% of positive feedback thrills me! It emboldens me, it inspires me, it pushes me to push the boundaries further.

…but momma always said “be cautious of strangers,” and that’s on repeat in the back of my mind. At what point does one draw the line between what belongs in the physical world, and what can be shared in the virtual world? Or should there even be a line that separates the two — at this point, in almost 2021, shouldn’t they be considered one in the same? Aren’t the people we communicate with online just as human as those we pass by in the grocery store? Is saying “hello” to someone online any different than approaching a stranger in a book store and asking whether they recommend the book in their hands?

I still grapple with these questions myself, but the answer I resoundingly arrive back to is: Connection is connection, regardless of how it is made. Especially in this time, where Covid is ravaging through personal relationships. Can we not just appreciate connections for what they are, instead of diluting the importance of some because they were made online?

I am a young adult now, and the world is standing at the precipice of a technological revolution. Because of the pandemic, life is changing as we know it, and I’m going to adapt to it in the best way I know how — by reaching out to those around me, through social media, because nowadays it is safer to make connections online than it is to make them in person.