This question is not really a technological one. Technology merely gives kids’ mistakes a large platform from which to broadcast to a much larger group of peers. When I was a teen, if three kids passed mean notes and were caught, those three would be called to the principal’s office, and the issue would be largely private. Now that kind of scenario plays out on Facebook and involves the six degrees of separation of the whole, Internet-using world. This fact tends to escape students. They do not see the Internet as public, but rather as an extension of their bedrooms. They do not envision the millions of nameless, faceless people who could be pulling their photo from their albums, or even the named administrators with familiar faces who will see the picture of students drinking at a party (when it’s posted by a snubbed friend, or even a well-meaning but clueless friend).
As parents and teachers, we should teach kids to protect their privacy settings on social networking sites, a simple fix, by adjusting who can see their page, restricting access to their Walls and photos, and disallowing downloads of their photos. Yet that means a further layer of invisibility from the adult community. The better students protect themselves online, the harder it is for us to know what they are doing online, which is why we must trust students and teach them to make the connection between what they post and what could happen in the “real” world.
Young people are continually extending the use of social networking sites, their phones, and their laptops. One group of chemistry students at a local school created a group on Facebook that turned into an impromptu homework help blog. They kept abreast of assignments and shared the resources they found. The students invited the teacher as a friend, and she still uses some of those resources in her teaching today. Several extracurricular groups at my school use Facebook pages and groups to confirm meeting times and communicate announcements. Yes, students spend an inordinate amount of time watching silly videos on YouTube (just like most adults I know), but what YouTube offers teachers in terms of illustrating a physics experiment or seeing an author speak about her work is priceless.
However, once a ten-year-old discovers the world of YouTube from his friends or a school project, monitoring what he chooses to view becomes crucial. This challenge increases as kids get older and want their privacy—which I believe we should respect to a certain extent—but hopefully by that point, we as parents and as teachers will have talked to students frequently about the issues, which are more moral than technological.
We already will have discussed why we collect wireless phones during exams and how being a good friend doesn’t mean texting a compromising picture to the entire ninth grade (even if she sent it to you first). We will have covered the following: being a good person means not participating in online bullying–at the very least, when you see five people go on the attack on Facebook, don’t participate; at best, speak up to stop it.
As administrators, we now rely on the victims of bullying more than ever before because it’s hard to detect. When students see offensive things online perpetrated by their peers, we can help only if they print out the page. Otherwise, the ever-updated Wall, or message board, or instant message conversation will disappear, and it becomes impossible to hold students accountable.
A recent trend at my school is for girls to flash their web cameras during online chats with boys. The challenge for the viewers is to click a picture at the precisely right moment. This issue involves an age-old one of teaching girls to respect their bodies and all students to do the right thing, but it also involves communicating an idea of their future. Who knows which person, five years from now, will Google that girl only to pull up the “silly” photo she allowed to happen as a prank? The consequences are intangible to students, yet they seriously affect their future college applications, online resumes, reference checks.
Just as students must learn online responsibility, teachers too need to realize that social networking—and basically anything you do on your computer—creates an online diary that is accessible to someone, somewhere, someday. Again, as with any teachable moment, we must practice what we preach.
Molly Chehak is the Chair of Upper School English at Bullis School in Potomac, MD.
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