GNA INSIDER- Your safety is very important. There are many kids our age or younger who don’t know how serious it is to keep ourselves safe. As sad as it is, we live in a world where there are people that want to harm or hurt us. It’s our job to learn and understand ways to be safer.

Below is a list I created to help you stay safe. My plan is to spread awareness to teens my age or younger who should put their safety as a priority and study this list to prevent any bad situations.

• If you are on social media, this is the most important rule. Never follow or add someone you do not know. There have been many criminal cases that started because someone added a person they aren’t familiar with and ended with a teen gone missing. If a stranger adds you online, don’t add them back and block them immediately.

• If you are on social media, never tell a stranger your personal information, and also never put your personal information on your page.

• If you ever get a random link sent to you, never open it. If you open a random link, from an unknown number, you can possibly get hacked and your personal information on your phone can be available to the person that sent the link to you.

• If you ever take a Uber or Lyft, always send a close friend or family member, the information about the car and the driver. The information to send should be the license plate, car model (name), the route to the location, the race, and the features of the driver. The point of this is to let people know of your whereabouts, just in case anything was to occur.

• If you ever take a Uber or Lyft, call someone you trust to stay on the phone with you until you reach your destination, but never make it known that you’re on the phone. This lets anyone on the phone hear or see what’s going on in the car.

•  If you ever choose to go out with someone you have met online, always bring a friend of 2 or 3 because anything can happen. If something was to happen, you have friends there that will help you or witness any weird things happening. (In general, meeting a random person is never a good idea).

•  Use a VPN.  A VPN helps people connect to safe wifi connections when they’re not at home. Connecting to random connections outside gives hackers an easy way into your phone and they can access your personal information. On your phone, search up NordVPN on your AppStore and download it to prevent any hacks.

• Use secure passwords. If you have any easy guessing passwords, change them immediately. Using easy passwords can allow hackers to hack you, change your password and lock you out. your own social media or email accounts. So, create a strong password, and if it’s hard for you to remember to jot it down on a piece of paper or notebook.

I hope many of you take this list seriously and put your safety as a priority.