Social Networking Sites

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[edit] Surveys/Data on SNS

NSBA, July '07

[edit] Positive Examples of Using SNS

From: Nancy Willard Wed May 31, 2006 to WWWEdu list

Create a profile that showcases your talents and interests. Treat your profile like a college application or job application.
If you are an artist, graphic designer, photographer, or musician use the site to showcase your talent.
Use a social networking site to coordinate the activities of a club or sports team. Include schedules and photos of games.
Use social networking to engage other teens in your school or community to discuss and propose solutions on local issues of importance to teens.
Create a family history social network. Invite all of your extended family to participate, including your grandparents and great grandparents. Scan in old photos and ask for family stories.
Find a way to use social networking for a social service project -- in your own community or on the other side of the world. Does a local homeless shelter need clothes and toys for kids? Does an impoverished village in Africa need books and supplies for a school?

Other:

Join a social network for teacher professional development. There are several listed at Ning in Education. For educators using Web 2.0 or collaborative technologies in the classroom, Classroom 2.0 is very popular.
Create a social network for your faculty and staff to allow for extended discussions that might not be possible in regular physical meetings.

[edit] Dangers

Of course there are positives - it gives people an easier way to blog with no setup time, aside from creating an account. But like many other social networking sites there are plenty of other uses such sharing pictures, keeping in touch with friends (or allowing friends that you've lost contact with to find you), and so forth. One could even say that whatever positives come with a social network site, it is very easy to get sucked into the 'darker side' of them, depending on the user's personality. Overall the aspects of this are much like chat rooms or even instant messaging - having the opportunity to act out and pretend with seemingly few consequences can be pretty enticing. You could even say that it is an enabler for people to dissasociate from who they really are - with positive or negative results.

Knowing both students and friends with MySpace accounts, a few observations that come to mind are:

The ability to be whoever you want to be, without anyone knowing differently. Kids often have a desire to be someone else, act older or more mature than they are, one-up each other, and so forth. MySpace enables you to say whatever you want about yourself, post any pictures (within reason) you'd like others to see, and network with very specific demographics.

A 14 year old girl, that thanks to stating she is 19, suddenly has invites to all manner of clubs, older guys making approaches (themselves in reality being potentially much older, or dangerous, than they seem), publicly stating things that due to their age could get them into serious trouble, and so forth.

All it takes is adding someone to your Friends list (3, maybe 5 clicks) to get in touch with them. I've found that younger girls are often all too eager to get the attention of a cute guy - almost regardless of age - and I've done plenty of worrying in my lifetime to back that up. Because anyone can become anyone else on MySpace, there's no sure way at all to tell if that 20 year-old guy you're going to meet isn't a 50 year-old predator - or a 15 year-old nerd.

Addiction. A friend of mine is nearly addicted to MySpace. She's got something like 500 'friends.' Why? Perhaps it is an achievement or something - but with that many people that are connected to you somehow, it results in tons of messages and a lot of 'work' to keep up with. This then sucks time from schoolwork and real-life relationships.

Security and safety. What happens when a student say, has a drug problem, and writes about it on MySpace. Can you use that as proof? What if they do not have a drug problem, but in acting out, write that they do. Can you use that against them? Issues of privacy and speech come up all over. That being said I'm sure that should a school happen to face an issue such as the above, they have prior procedures to follow - I'm just thinking out loud.

Predators. Should a student be ignorant enough to put what school they attend on their public MySpace page, it becomes a predator's dream - and it gives me chills. A system with good-enough intentions, that can be utilized in this manner should be enough to make any educator sit up straight and pay very close attention. Should a student be a member of a high-profile (read: rich) family, and the situation can get worse.

[edit] What Can Schools Do

So what can someone do to crystalize safety concerns to students, while at the same time respecting their want/need to 'let loose' and have fun (a delicate balance, to be sure)?

When discussing social networking with parents, faculty and administrators, it is important to have the student perspective in mind. The significance of the social networking experience in the lives of our children must be taken into consideration before we become too critical of the process. The key is communication with the students, a firm understanding of appropriate online behavior, and the realities and inherent dangers that arise from publishing personal material in a public place. -Jenni

You can set MySpace pages to be private, so that only those in your 'network' can see your full page. Highly recommended, as it prevents poking around.

Block MySpace using a filter. It doesn't prevent them from using it at home, but does help with any potential liabilities. Plus the time-suck I've seen from kids using it during school could be avoided.

Inform parents of the positives and negatives. The kids won't like their parents knowing, but in this case it really is for their own good.

Narc. Not recommended unless there's an absolute need. Sign up for an account, do a search by school name (or e-mail address, or full name). Once you've found one student you can check their Friend list to find other kids, and eventually the one you are looking for. I can almost guarantee that the picture painted on their MySpace page will be a shocker - or at least surprising.

So if you didn't know too much about MySpace, I hope this was helpful. Like many other web trends, it has both positives and negatives - I've found some great indie bands on it, but at the same time I've run across plenty of pages that make me cringe. *justin d 17:22, 13 Dec 2005

Two resources which may be of some indirect help, at least with the older students are: A recent NPR story about two start-ups which help people clean-up their online personalities: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6462504 (This can be a useful lead-in, as in 'why would such a service be necessary?') A very useful document linked to from the NPR story is a long and thoughtful piece called 'Not Just Your Space - The College Student's Guide to Managing Online Reputation' http://www.naymz.com/blog/?page_id=79 Both of these resources are aimed primarily at college students, but they could be helpful for some of our more mature students.

We don't block social networking sites (we are a boarding school) because the "principle" of social networking is precisely what young people should aspire to; developing networks of friends and acquaintances around the world. While some students have had pen pals, the Internet makes this process much easier. We also acknowledge that bad things will happen when students expose themselves and their school to people who wish to exploit children, but that issue has been discussed on this list. We have always had a section of our Handbook called "Reach of the School." While it is deliberately vague, the principle is that while one is a student at our school, regardless of where they are in the world or cyberspace, they represent the school. Consequently, any behavior that violates our Honor Code or defames the school in any way will be handled as a disciplinary matter. Of course, we have to become aware of the offense in cyberspace, but several people at the school and some parents have helped us with the due diligence.

St. John's Prep Approach -- we are an all-boys high school (approximately 1200 boys). We had some issues with MySpace postings by our students and we took a multi-pronged approach... [Our approach has been education, not punishment. When we find students posting inappropriate material to MySpace our Dean of Students talks with them and their parents. No punishments are handed out and the inappropriate material is usually removed within 24 hours.]
- We block access to MySpace.com and facebook.com (along with lots of other sites) from computers on campus. No students have made any argument that access to MySpace.com fits into the framework of our acceptable use policy ("educational use"). That's not to say that there aren't arguments to be made, the students just haven't made it in issue since they can access it as much as they want to from home.
- We sent a letter to all parents talking about the good and bad aspects of myspace.com and facebook.com. We didn't get a great deal of feedback, but the few parents who did reply thanked us for opening their eyes and helping them understand what their sons had access to.
- We had a speaker from the Essex County District Attorney's Office come speak to our parents (about 30-40 parents showed up) about internet safety. She didn't talk much about MySpace.com and Facebook.com, but she did talk a great deal about chat rooms, instant messaging, and the ease in which children and adolescents can get wrapped up in more than what they can handle.

[edit] Social Networking Sites

Nings

Ning Build your own social networks
Classroom 2.0 Social network for educators using Web 2.0 and technology in the classroom.
Independent School Educators Ning ISEnet on Ning
Education Social Network for educators building social networks using Ning

For Kids

[edit] Software for SNS

I'd also put in a vote for Drupal. We began using DrupalEd (http://www.drupaled.org/) for the Laptop Institute site (http://www.laptopinstitute.com) this summer and have been very happy with the results. We use it for posting conference information and updates but most importantly it is a tool for teachers and techies to collaboratively work together and promote the spirit of the conference year round rather than just those three days in July. I've also used Elgg which is nice but I think DrupalEd has a greater amount of flexibility and adaptability since it is built on the Drupal core. Elgg is a bit leaner and has less administrative abilities (for example, to change menus in Elgg you'd have to customize the theme and do a bit of coding whereas with Drupal/ DrupalEd you have an administrative panel which gives you a GUI to do most of the work).

[edit] Thoughts on Facebook from ChildrenOnline.org

Retrieved from ISED-L list-serv 1/09, CC3.0 a, s-a, nc license Doug Fodeman wrote:

I've been following the discussion about Facebook with great interest because the use of Facebook repeated comes up in discussions about Internet safety, age-appropriate use and student online behavior. Though many schools have different policies around using or accessing Facebook, we share many of the same concerns.

Through our Internet safety organization, ChildrenOnline.org, we've surveyed the Internet behavior of thousands of children and teens. We've learned a great deal about their use of Facebook and the inherent issues they face, as well as their schools, because Facebook is one of the 2 most popular websites for independent school students across grades 4 - 12. (The other site is YouTube.) I'd like to summarize our shared concerns and add a few, along with my 2 cents.....

1. For those schools that allow it, the use of Facebook in our communities can take a huge amount of Internet bandwidth. -- And for those with access to it, how do we reconcile our conerns that younger and younger children are using this adult social network. Four years ago it was rare to learn of a child below 7th grade with an account. Last fall, for the first time, 4th graders began telling us that they had accounts. We now estimate that about 60 - 70% of 7th graders have accounts. These children are too young to be using Facebook or other adult social networks.

2. Using Facebook (and other similar social networks) takes time. Often, a LOT of time! The greatest motivating factor for children to use technology in grades 7 and up is to connect to others. To socialize. Their irrisistible need to connect with their peers, coupled with the development of 24/7 accessible technologies, can make the use of sites like Facebook all consuming. We have concerns for children and teens today who grow up in a world where they are wired 24/7 without a break. For many of our kids there is little or no "down time." Some have difficulty disengaging from their social life. For some, it even raises their anxiety level to be without their cell phones for a few hours! We don't believe this is healthy for them.

3. For our students using Facebook (and other similar social networks), there is a false sense of privacy. Couple this false sense of privacy with the feeling of anonymity and lack of social responsibility that often develops from using text-centered telecommunications, and we see that many students post embarrassing, humiliating, denigrating and hurtful content in both text, photos and videos. We need to teach them that NOTHING IS PRIVATE online, especially their social networks. We need to show them examples of the serious consequences that have occurred to those whose egregious online behavior has been made public. Students have been expelled from high schools and colleges. Students have been denied acceptances to intern programs, admission to independent high schools, colleges, and jobs at summer camps. Students, and their families, have been sued for slander and defamation of character. Students, and their parents, have been arrested.... all because of the content they have posted in their "private" social network accounts. People are trolling their accounts. Hackers, scammers, reporters, police, high school and college admissions officers, employers, summer camp directors...... Adults ARE looking and they don't get it! Also, they don't realize that the instant they post something to Facebook (or MySpace or YouTube, etc.), they've just lost control and ownership of that content. Try reviewing the privacy rights of Facebook with your high school students. It is quite an eye opener!

4. There are 1000's of scams targeting teens in their social networks, especially Facebook and MySpace. These communities are predicated on a certain level of trust. Our students, though very knowledgeable about using technology, are often naive and easily manipulated (thought they would hate to think so). A simple example is a scam that hit Facebook users late last fall. Many teens had their accounts phished and the phishers sent out posts from those accounts to their friends that said "OMG! There are some photos of you on this website" along with a link to the website. The website showed hazy photos in the background, hard to make out, that appeared to be somewhat pornographic. A popup told the visitor that they would have to register for an account in order to view any photos on the site. I'm certain that many kids were tricked into revealing a lot of personal information about themselves in this scam. In another scam that targeted MySpace in the last couple of years, more than 14,000 users were tricked by fake MySpace pages into visiting music web sites to purchase music for $2-3 per album. Instead of getting music, the site charged their credit cards $300-600. Kids are easily fooled. They want to believe what is said to them, especially when it appears that others believe. Scammers use this trick against them by creating 1000's of fake pages on social networks that talk about bogus web sites to buy stuff, products that don't work (e.g. herbal meds) and cool pages that only result in drive-by spyware downloads.

5. Spyware and Adware installations are very serious concerns for PC owners. Those of us with PCs running Windows OS in our schools already devote a great deal of time, money and other resources to these threats. Giving kids access to social networks in our school environments greatly exacerbates these threats however. We need to teach our students that "Free" usually has a price when it comes to the Internet. We need to teach them how to try to determine if software, such as a Facebook Add-on, is likely a disguised piece of malware. (Much of it is!) Below are 3 links to articles as examples: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=102800 http://sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2008/08/facebook.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/02/facebook_spam/ By the way, us "Mac owners" are not completely off the hook. Last June, the first 3 spyware apps were discovered against the Mac OS and late last fall there was evidence of hijackware that successsfully targeted Firefox on a Mac.

6. We need to acknowledge that screens act as a moral disconnect for many of our students. Every day online there are thousands of kids who say mean and hurtful things because they can. They are increasingly living their social lives in a world without caring, loving adults watching out for them, without expectations for their behavior, and without boundaries. Research shows that children grow up healthiest in a world with love, communication, structure and boundaries. These qualities hardly exist online for our children/teens. Instead, harassing language is normalized, sexualization of girls/women is common place, and the lack of supervision creates an "anything goes" wild-wild-west. Here is a simple case in point. Would Texas Longhorn lineman, Buck Burnette, have said the same thing about President-Elect Obama if handed a microphone at a school assembly in front of hundreds of students? Would he have written his posted statement on a large poster and held it up in downtown Houston for a few hours? I doubt it. Visit: http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2008/11/06/texas-c-buck-burnette-learns-why-racist-obama-facebook-updates-a/ Our students need to learn to be nice and kind to others online. To be respectful and thoughtful about what they say and how they act online.

7. Our students have very little knowledge about how much they are being marketed to; how their purchasing decisions and attitudes are being manipulated; how their personal information is used, and even how valuable that personal information is. Most don't understand the damage that can come from identity theft and impersonation. They are heavily targeted on Facebook and their data is heavily "scrubbed" and used. Facebook's announcement about Beacon in Nov. 2007, brought such a huge negative assault from users that Mark Zuckerberg had to back-step and tell users that they were automatically opted OUT, rather than IN, as planned. Most users saw Beacon as a privacy nightmare. We need to help our students become more media savvy, understand the value of personal information and how to protect it. http://gigaom.com/2007/11/06/facebook-beacon-privacy-issues/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13507_3-9829401-18.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2228622,00.asp

8. Our research shows that children and teens are increasingly using telecommunications technologies, including Facebook, to avoid difficult face-to-face conversations. For example, it saddens us to hear 16-year olds say that they would rather break up with their girlfriend/boyfriend by texting, IM-ing or posting on their Facebook wall than tell them in person (or over the phone). When asked why, they'll tell you "because it's easier." We believe this avoidance will have increasing ramifications on their communication skills through life.

9. Also, children are increasingly turning to making friendships and building relationships online. This includes the use of Facebook. Socialization skills in children are best learned in real life. Children are far too inexperienced to use telecommunications tools to make friends and build relationships in a healthy and safe manner online.

I have a Facebook account and actually see it as a wonderful and valuable resource. However, just because Facebook says that anyone 14 years or old CAN use Facebook, doesn't mean that they should. It isn't an age-appropriate or developmentally healthy place for our children and younger teens to hang out. Facebook is not working to protect our children and the laws in our country are terribly inadequate to safeguard our children online in general. Not enough is being done to protect and educate our children/teens against the risks that come from using the Internet, and Facebook in particular. We (adults, parents, educators) need to do more.

By the way, ChildrenOnline.org produces a free monthly newsletter about kids and Internet issues. The issue coming out in a week will be about Facebook and some of the issues facing kids who use it.

Doug Fodeman Co-Director, ChildrenOnline.org