Social Media/Control

To read the full text and background material click here: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/quit-facebook-or-be-expelled-school-says-20120516-1yqp0.html

Appearing this week in The Age was an interesting piece on Facebook. The issue at the heart of the discussion is cyber-bullying. It’s not something that we haven’t already heard a lot about. I know that there are very strong feelings about it in general, what is the school responsibility, what is the parent’s responsibility and what is the child’s responsibility? It is a far more complicated problem than most people realise. That’s why no clear answer has been given and society in general moving ahead.

As far as St Kevin’s response to this issue goes, we have a duty of care to all our students. We also realise that the greatest success/influence we can have on your children is when we are consistent with each other. So I will outline for you here some of the issues and responses that the school has.

Firstly, this is a very broad area of concern, this needs to be thought about when applying any guidelines. What is put in place for today’s problems may be quite ineffective for future technology issues. This is something that we need to be concerned with as the rate of development online is staggering. So with this in mind, it would be silly to plan rules or guidelines that only affect one technology such as Facebook. To start with, social online tools themselves spend countless dollars and time investing in creating their own guidelines for use and appropriate responses for inappropriate use. As parents we need to become aware of these. If your children are going to use Facebook, you as a parent have a responsibility to read these. http://www.facebook.com/policies/?ref=pf

An important aspect of Facebook is that under the Terms and Conditions of Use, to create an account you need to be a minimum of 13 years of age. When signing up the user has to put in their birthdate. If you are not 13 and have an account, the user has lied about their age.

Facebook can and is used by primary aged children in classroom situation though. A teacher can set up a “class” and give access to their students and create an online class community. Twitter also has age restrictions. All other social media sites and tools have terms and conditions for their use. Parents have a responsibility to read the fine print. Online social contact should be treated the same as physical contact. If your child was going out with someone you’ve never met, you usually have a 101 questions about them. Just because online social media happens in your home it doesn’t mean it should be any different. The same issues are happening!

The whole issue of what a school can/does/should regulate outside of the walls of the school is also a very grey area. There are many areas where schools do regulate what happens outside of the school walls, but there seems to not be a clear line of delineation where parent and school hand over. Each school creates their own boundary of control and parents can elect to stay at the school within these boundaries or travel outside of them and perhaps move schools.

My personal belief is that while the past is no longer relevant to our online 24/7 world in many ways, there is certainly much from the past that can show us how we should be acting to future proof our children. Look back into history at those that wanted to ban, or worse still, burn books that were deemed as inappropriate. It is clear now that this was not the appropriate response. Today, this would never be a viable option. We skill children in book selection skills and raise our children with the appropriate core values of life that will guide them in their decision making. I this way we are not acting to protect them from “some” books, we are giving them life skills that can be used in a variety of different situations. Social media should be the same. Adhere to the rules put in place by the makers and then be aware of what is happening. If your child spent three hours out with friends and was then reticent to talk to you about what happened, would you look further into it and take some action? Shouldn’t time on the computer talking to people be the same? If your child won’t communicate online unless they are alone, what is happening? Your rules for online social engagement should be similar to your rules for physical engagement. If you answer is that you have concern because you don’t know what’s happening … then do something about it. Find out. Banning its use isn’t the answer.

I’m not saying that this school in The Age has taken the wrong approach. As a matter of fact, they have some very influential people (Michael Carr-Gregg) supporting them. But I do have concern that the issue will always be present and are we going to ban every social media tool that pops up? If that’s what this school is going to do, then just now, these social media applications alone have over 100 million users each, and that is changing by the minute!

Facebook, Qzone, Windows Live, Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Habbo, Skype, Google +, Vkontakte, Badoo, Twitter, Bebo, Linkedin.

The reality is that the potential for learning and connecting with students is as great, or greater than the invention of the printing press. Yes there is potential for harm, as there is in many human undertakings. But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater!

If you have some opinions, questions, suggestions on this issue, we’d love to hear them. As stated earlier, we need to working together.