Online Safety for You & Your Family

Jaynie Parrish is one of nine rising community leaders who took part in Aspen Digital’s Community & Tech Leaders Initiative. Over the course of a year, the cohort. deepened their understanding of emerging technologies and explored how community perspectives could shape the innovation ecosystem. This blogpost and accompanying resource was produced at the conclusion of the Initiative. 

I lead Arizona Native Vote, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to increase voter turnout and civic engagement in tribal and rural communities across Arizona. 

Arizona Native Vote is not an organization that parachutes in a few months before an election and disappears until the next one rolls around (a cycle of two or even four years). We were created so we could have some kind of continuity and real program in between election cycles to keep our communities civically engaged. This kind of deep on-the-ground presence means we’re also the ones on the front lines and can see early signs and challenges, but may not always have the tools to name them, such as how misinformation is spreading across digital platforms and the cybersecurity threats that come with it.

Turning Learning Into a Resource for Our Community

I was thrilled to be selected to participate in the Aspen Digital Community & Tech Leader Cohort. For my final project, I didn’t want my learning from the monthly programming and engagement that Aspen Digital organized for me and my fellow cohort members to stay with just me. So I built a resource our team at Arizona Native Vote could carry into our community work and present alongside the voter education and civic engagement programming we already do: a plain-language booklet called Online Safety for You & Your Family. The goal was simple: help our community members and voters understand how tech and digital platforms actually impact their daily lives, what to watch out for, and how to protect themselves. We plan to distribute it to the Native youth and families we work with.

The booklet and online presentation walks through what I learned over the course of the fellowship in a way meant for the kitchen table:

• Spot what’s not real, Take9 before you share — how to recognize deepfakes, cloned voices, and false election information, and why pausing for nine seconds before sharing or reacting can stop misinformation in its tracks.
• Robocalls and fake voices — what AI voice-cloning scams sound like, common scripts (fake IRS debt, utility shutoffs, prize scams), and exactly who to call in Arizona to report fraud.
• Protect your phone and data — simple, concrete steps for locking down location sharing, app permissions, and ad tracking, without having to quit social media altogether.
• Where to find trusted information — a go-to list of verified election and fact-checking sources, including Arizona Native Vote’s own site, so people have somewhere reliable to turn when something feels off.
• A take-home checklist — five simple actions folks can do that same week to protect themselves and their households.

I also made sure to ground it in things our community would recognize — including a real example of a Navajo Nation champion roper warning people about scammers on Facebook, and AI-generated fake photos that had circulated locally. It’s one thing to sit in a room in D.C. and hear from experts. It’s another to bring that knowledge home and put it directly into the hands of the grandmothers, the young voters, and the families we serve every day.

Arizona

One big lesson for me is this: Arizona Native Vote works directly with voters on protecting democracy, voting, SNAP food benefits, housing, direct needs and challenges, and we hadn’t had the capacity or time to think and talk about how tech, AI, and cybersecurity intersect with our work. This program pushed me to add digital literacy to the mix — not as a separate issue, but as part of the same fight for our communities’ well-being. Our team also took advantage of several of Aspen Digital’s free training sessions so we could be more informed. 

It also reframed who we should be talking to. It’s not enough to educate our community members or advocate at the local and government level. We also need to be in direct conversation with the tech industry itself — walking in with receipts, telling them plainly what we’re seeing on the ground: how misinformation spreads, where platforms fail our communities, what scams are targeting our elders. I learned about the Take9 campaign during the program, and it’s exactly the kind of practical tool our communities need more of.

I also came away thinking differently about who technology is built for and by. So much of it is designed without disabled people in mind, when in reality, accessible design makes things better for everybody. And because there are still human hands — and human biases — behind every AI system and every platform, those biases don’t disappear. They get amplified, and so does the potential for harm if we’re not paying attention.

That’s why I think the most powerful place to start is close to home: helping our community understand what happens when a grandparent loses thousands of dollars to a scam, or has their identity stolen. Helping people understand that “free” services like email and social media aren’t really free — we’re paying with our data and our privacy. One resource from our cohort that I keep coming back to is Aspen Digital’s Responsible Data Practices for Product Equity report. It lays out, in plain terms, how companies should be collecting and using demographic data responsibly, and why that matters so much for communities like mine that have historically been miscounted, mis-categorized, or left out of the datasets that shape the products we all use. It gave me language and a framework I didn’t have before for pushing tech companies to be more accountable about what they collect and why.

And helping families think about screen time, online behavior, and mental health the same way we think about any other habit that needs balance, especially for kids growing up with a lifetime of digital platforms ahead of them.

Why This Work Matters

This is an ongoing conversation, and there’s still a lot of research and learning to do. But I’m grateful for programs like Aspen Digital’s Community & Tech Leaders Initiative that are willing to bring in everyday people from communities like mine — not to make us experts, but to help us ask better questions, build real relationships across the country, and turn what we learn into actions, resources, and education tools and materials that can actually reach the people who need them.

The views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Aspen Institute, its programs, staff, volunteers, participants, or its trustees.