What if somone says something bad?
Regular readers of this blog know that training young people to use social networking/social media effectively is something I am very passionate about. I also think that, used properly, it is an invaluable tool for admissions departments, alumni offices as well as a way for current students to chronicle student life.
There was an article in this morning’s NY Times (link) focusing on the MIT Admissions Department’s embrace of social media by selecting student bloggers to write about what life is really like at the Cambridge geek factory. (And I say “geek” with love.) The powers-that-be at MIT have been able to get past the fear of “What if someone says something bad?” and given students, AND commenters it should be noted, an unedited forum to sell the school. Let’s face it- high school kids today know when they’re being BS’ed. Hell, my seven year old sees a commercial on TV and said to me, “Dad, it doesn’t really do that. This is just a commercial.” I honestly don’t think I was that savvy at 7, so imagine what kind of filters 17 and 18-year olds have.
But back to MIT bloggers: they are chosen by means of a contest that grades their writing samples. According to the Times article, once incoming students arrive on campus, “[T]he bloggers are sought out as celebrities during the annual ‘Meet the Bloggers’ session at Campus Preview Weekend.” One of the bloggers, for example, wrote about her love of anime, something that would have little chance of making it into a slick brochure or marketing video. Yet a prospective student who was also loved anime saw the post and reacted, “I never would have guessed that people at MIT are interested in anime. Oh, well…+1 on my Why I should go to MIT list.”
STILL think current students are poor ambassadors for your school? My response to that is the same thing I say to companies who are unsure if they should let their employees blog, tweet or otherwise speak on behalf of the company. If you can’t trust your employees, you have a bigger problem than just deciding on your social media strategy. Further, if you have a sub-par product, maybe the key tenets of social media- transparency, openness, conversation and engagement- make you a poor candidate for a social media strategy. You can put lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig.
And in regard to the “what if someone says something bad?” fear, here’s an anecdote: One blogger complained about how the resident advising system was making it impossible for her to move out of her housing. The housing office requested that the admissions office remove the post, but they did not. Rather, they suggested that the housing office leave a comment or rebuttal on the blog. “Eventually, the system was changed.”
That, party people, is the essence of blogging, in particular, and social media, in general.
Read MoreHave you seen yourself online through someone else’s eyes?
As regular readers of this blog know, I devote a lot of time to talking about how social networks are shaping our kids and that we, as parents, need to keep ourselves apprised of what’s going on out there in facebook-twitter-flickrland. The assumption tends to be that we need to keep an eye on our kids because they might do (or post) something dumb that might haunt them forever.
Even President Obama, in his back-to-school speech, explicitly warned kids about posting the wrong kind of stuff on facebook.Young people, the thinking goes, don’t have the benefit of life experience nor do they show sufficient discretion in terms of the things they choose to share online.
Perhaps. But I would argue that the real enemy of discretion is complacency. After you’ve spent a little time and you get comfortable on social networks, there is sometimes a tendency to let your guard down. As the economy continues its jobless recovery, did you know that 45% of HR professionals used social networks to research candidates occasionally? (Google, facebook and LinkedIn being the top three resources they checked, surprising no one.)
So if you were sitting in a job interview right now and the HR person asked, “Hey, mind if we pull up your facebook page real quick?” What would you say?
Now, because I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy, I should mention that the converse is also true: HR pros admitted to hiring because of what they saw on a candidate’s profile, citing “a positive look into the individual’s personality” or because the profile was professional, creative or “showed off the candidate’s skills.”
If you’re looking for a job, make sure you’re in that second group. It’s not just kids who post dumb stuff.
Read MoreMoms, kids and social networking
Summertime seems to be ushering in a drop off in facebook traffic amongst the 18-25 set, although they still remain the dominant demographic. The last 30 days has seen a 3% drop in traffic among the college crowd, but it has also produced a bump of 1.5 million users among those over 35.According to some usage figures, active facebook users in the US now total 70 million, with 60% of them over 26.
When I speak in schools and to education trade groups, one of the biggest things I hear from parents is that they are afraid of what their kids are doing online. But a lot of this fear comes from a lack of knowledge. In other words, the parents themselves have not taken the time to jump on facebook or one of the other social networking services to see what all the fuss is about. Well, that might be changing. The popular parenting site Babycenter recently completed a pretty extensive study about the uptake among moms and they say that moms who use social media is up 462% since 2006. As always, these numbers should be kept in perspective since in 2006, the overall usage numbers of social media was nowhere near where it is today.
The more parents, teachers and administrators educate THEMSELVES about social networking, the better chance we will all have to help our kids become digitally savvy adults. Kids might get bummed out being “friended” by their parents or another adult relative. But it’s worth it if the end result is that we, as adults, learn the facts about living our lives online instead of responding to misinformation and negative hype.
Read MoreOnline reputation management- a growth business?
I’ve been thinking a lot about where we’re all going to be in several years after we have posted to all our blogs, tweeted our way to a fare-thee-well, left comments, posted pictures and done all of the things we think of as commonplace in today’s world. I am around more and more students and I try to think about their futures, even if sometimes they don’t! Job seekers, those coming out of school or those trying to reposition themselves in our slowly recovering world economy, are also in my thoughts.
The trouble with living your life on the internet is that sometimes you wish you could take things back, just like in real life. The mistakes you make, the pictures you take, the things you say- they can become permanent digital artifacts. It’s easy to leave tracks, but tough to cover them. Five or ten years ago, if you did something dumb at a party, it wouldn’t end up on the Internet for all to see. (I’m looking at you, Michael Phelps!)
This is why I think online reputation management will become such a growth industry in the coming years. Social media is so new, we’re all figuring it out in real time. There is no history to guide us and, let’s face it, we don’t always exercise perfect discretion in life. The reputation management business is not new, but it mostly focuses on institutions, brands and larger entities. (Here’s a good link to John Jantsch’s blog.) I see more companies, widgets, programs and other solutions popping up to help individuals as we move forward.
What do you think? Is this a service you would pay for? (You don’t have to get too specific about WHY you might use such a service…) What are your thoughts? Please post a comment.
Read MoreWhere is the real danger online? It might be offline.
I recently finished reading a great book called “Born Digital- Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives” by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. It is a terrific, and necessary, analysis of those born after 1980 into the digital world, who they are and what the world that they are creating might look like. It is an exhaustively researched book that touches on so many topics that are becoming ever more important in our digital age. Topics such as privacy, identity, gaming, the impact of the internet on how we learn and how we create and, of course, safety.
Many of the long term effects of the issues the authors touch on are unknowable and will only be revealed with the passage of time, but the authors are to be commended for approaching these subjects head on and searching for answers. If you were born BEFORE 1980, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book.
Mr. Palfrey is a faculty director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and he chairs the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, which recently released the results of their year-long study about internet safety submitted to the 50 state attorneys general. The results might surprise you and the report is available for download.
Obviously, what resonated with me most was their recommendation that “Parents and caregivers should: educate themselves about the Internet and the ways in which their children use it, as well as about technology in general…”
Responses like this one from Illinois are not helpful, in my opinion. The Internet did not CREATE predators or scam artists or bullies or identity thieves, but it sometimes takes an unwarranted amount of the blame because it’s an easy target.
This is not a blog dedicated to book reviews, but every now and then I come across one that I want to share.
More information about the Digital Natives project can be found here.
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Is “sexting” the problem?
Parents of teenaged kids have always faced multiple challenges, and things are no different today.
When I speak about social networking to school audiences, I try and hit a few key topics. Among them are the intersection of online and offline behavior, parental involvement and the application of common sense.
Sexting, or the practice of sending nude or semi-nude photos across wireless networks, is a new phenomenon enabled by ubiquitous cell phone cameras. A December 2008 survey of nearly 1300 teens and young adults found that 20% of teenagers and 33% of 20-26-year olds said they had done it. The consequences can be devastating.
I am not defending sexting as a wise thing to do. But some of the responses to it have been draconian and unproductive, in my opinion. The most high profile case comes from northeastern Pennsylvania where District Attorney George Skumanick threatened to bring sexual abuse charges against the girls who were discovered to have sent pictures of themselves in partial states of undress unless they attended a 10-hour class about pornography and sexual violence. If they declined to take the class and were convicted of the charges, they could serve prison time and might have to register as sex offenders. Oh, did I mention that the girls in question are 15?
Three of the girls and their parents, out of the 20 to whom the D.A. offered this deal, have filed a suit in Federal court asking the court to drop the charges. The three families assert that the deal was unfair, illegal and “retaliation” against the families for asserting their First and Fourth Amendment rights to oppose the deal. (The Fourth Amendment covers unreasonable searches and seizures.)
Again, I am not defending the kids’ behavior. But it does fall into the category of ill-advised, some would say stupid, behavior that every single one of us was guilty of during our teenage years. The difference is, before the internet, our stupid behavior did not become a digital artifact left behind forever. THAT is the lesson that needs to be imparted to kids today, not bringing them up on felony charges for raging hormones and dumb behavior.
Before you engage in some questionable digital behavior, think about whether or not you would do it in the “real world.” An analogy in this case might be, would you lift up your shirt in the middle of math class? Use common sense and realize that there should be no difference between your online and offline behavior.
Parents, for their part, need to remain involved and engaged. This does not mean spying or snooping. But it DOES mean talking to your kids about the implications of our “always on” digital world. Once you send a text, e-mail or a photo, it’s out of your control forever. It’s not always easy for teenagers to think beyond 5 minutes from now. That’s where we come in, as parents, faculty, administrators and concerned adults.
In some cases, a good talking to is the sensible alternative to jail time, don’t you think?
UPDATE: A federal judge on Monday, March 30 temporarily blocked the prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against the three teens. See the updated story here.
SECOND UPDATE: On March 17, 2010 a 3 judge Federal appellate ruling came down deciding that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges. Read more here.
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