Our last chapter talked about how to support our students' futures and briefly focused on social networking. Now, I may be the only one that feels that I can make it through life just fine without Facebook and in fact I'm thinking that I might a T-shirt stating this ;)
In all seriousness, my school recently had a pretty big issue with students using Facebook. Granted these entries were written at home (allowing the bully to come home) but the repercussions carried into the school day/week. Students who are not 13 (which 13 is still too young) are on Facebook using it as a toy and not a tool it is meant to be used as. In my opinion using a birthday date as the sole way to check how old individuals are in order to get an account is completely inadequate. Facebook is a billion dollar company and needs to figure this out. Usually when people are not doing anything wrong or have nothing to hide, they have no problem giving additional information if it would keep others safe. Not to mentioned we are already completely tracked while using online resources, what's so hard about giving up a little more privacy. I don't know the answer to this issue but if I had a billion dollars, I would definitely be more innovative to solve this.
Not only are my 10-12 year old students are on Facebook, they are pretending to be 20 or 30 years old. I understand that it is a parent's duty to stay current and "police" what their child is doing on the Internet. These kids are so tricky they make 2 pages and share one with their family and the other with their friends. Parents don't even know about the second page existing. As cyperbullying increase, teenage suicide has as well and unfortunately Facebook has yet taken the civil responsibility to improve this severely flawed system. A true disservice!
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You have hit on a common concern with social networking sites. And make no mistake about it, this is a serious issue. Maybe one of the reasons young people misuse social networking sites is because they are not educated on how to use them properly. This may be one area schools need to step in (some are).
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