JULY 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 43
The Don't Press Send campaign aims to make sure kids treat others as they want to be treated on social media. (Getty Images)
THE GOLDEN CLICK
BY SHERYL NANCE-NASH
When Katie Schumacher heard her children’s middle school principal explain the
many problems that social media was bringing into the school, the former teacher
took it as a call to action.
Following the orientation in 2013 at South Side Middle School in Rockville Centre
where her then-11-year-old twins attended, she asked the school’s administrators
if she could present to the students a list of rules in the hopes of lessening the
incidents in the school. That was the start of the Don’t Press Send Pledge, a list of
social media guidelines for children.
“As a parent and educator, I was disheartened,” she recalls. “Social media created
an unsafe environment and unkindness. Rules were needed.”
She presented her ideas to other schools and organizations locally. And thus, in
2013, Don’t Press Send was born. The mission of the DPS campaign then and now
is to provide guidelines and strategies for kind and careful online communication —
in other words, creating cyber civics.
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46 PETS 47 PARENTING
51KINDNESS
ACTS OF
TIPS
FAMILY & EDUCATION
ROCKVILLE CENTRE MOM FIGHTS CYBERBULLYING WITH DON’T PRESS SEND CAMPAIGN
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