10/23 — What is personal safety? What does personal safety mean to me?
When I think of personal safety, I think about physical safety first. This could be most important because I need to know how to protect myself from dangerous situations whether it involves natural disasters or with other people. I also need to be aware of the tools around me wherever I go to make sure I can be safe. Some of these protective tools and equipment could be pepper spray, weapons, self-defense skills, and even a phone or a different alert system to let others know that you are in danger. Further, being aware and using these tools could help me to protect others when I see them in dangerous situations as well.
Another level of safety that I think about is maintaining mental/emotional health. I believe that this is also an important aspect of personal safety because physical and emotional aspects work together in many ways. I feel that in today’s society, it is more evident (especially in teens and the rise of addiction in phones/ social media) that mental and emotional abuse leads to harm in one’s physical safety.
The last level of safety that I am thinking about is personal security, especially in relation to protecting and securing my personal information physically and virtually. For example, I find myself to always make sure that my credit cards or driver’s license are in a secure place in my wallet that does not show my identification externally. Another is making note of what type of personal information I use and upload online, especially when shopping online and the browser asks if you want to save that card you used online. Although it could be safe to do it, I never want to risk it. In fact, I haven’t set up and used Apple Pay on my phone because I did not want to risk losing my phone and therefore losing all of my personal information at once. Another example could be being aware of my social media posts and controlling who can see my profile. I find this extremely important because there are so many situations where your identity is stolen or strangers see pictures of who you are, where you live, etc. depending on how the privacy settings are set up.
Overall, personal safety seems complex and varying depending on one’s demographics: age, location, social status, ethnicity, level of education, etc. For example, personal safety to a toddler playing on a playground and personal safety to a female teen/ young adult walking home by herself at night means something very different in terms of protecting themselves from other people. Therefore, I believe that the definition of personal safety is always changing depending on the context of who and where the person is.
10/27 — Class Discussion about Personal Safety
-protection vs. prevention
-security & feeling secure
- what are things that are embedded in our notion of security that might be considered when designing new experiences around personal safety?
-security in 2020 vs. security in 2050 will probably be very different (the context, technology, protective tools/ methods, etc.)
