Social Networking and Your Teen
What are Teens Publishing About their Teachers on the Internet?
This article explores some of the implications of the new Facebook application 'Rate Your Teacher.' Have your teens added it yet?
The worrying answer to the above question is that many parents don't know. Applications like Rate Your Teacher enable extra functionality on teens' social networking spaces. Extras include the facility to take quizzes, meet people, find friends, participate in polls or, more seriously, to rate products or people.
Within seconds teenage users can click to add and send applications to friends, the momentum snowballing around the globe. At present the number of Rate Your Teacher users is around 150 and rising. This volume information is freely available to Facebook users.
Cyber-Bullying by Teenagers – Social Issues
Should society be concerned? Many teens argue that rating is harmless fun. Fun it probably is, but whether it is harmless only time will tell. Teachers, lecturers and professors could find themselves unknowingly the subject of ribaldry, criticism, victimisation or worse. Potential exists for slander and defamatory suggestions, if ratings are accompanied by gossip.
A study published in Pediatrics 2006 (Second Youth Internet Safety Survey, Examining Characteristics And Associated Distress Related to Internet Harassment , Michele L. Ybarra, MPH, PhDa, Kimberly J. Mitchell, PhDb, Janis Wolak, JDb and David Finkelhor, PhDb) suggests a need for bullying prevention programmes to help teens, but what about teachers?
Social Networking and Harassment
The internet has had a reputation for being a platform for online bullying. Sometimes cyber-bullying has involved student to student situations. Sometimes harassment issues in the workplace have found their way online and teens have been targeted by online predators. Teenagers have found themselves giving statements to the law about bullying allegations, now this could affect teachers too.
Online Bullying – Health Issues for Teachers
Stressed teachers, who are sometimes trying to give of their best in difficult circumstances, could be subjected to additional emotional and psychological trauma. Teenagers can be cruel in their humor and comments could be misleading, inaccurate, or derogatory, with scope for invention and exaggeration.
Some would not realise that an online campaign of uncomplimentary performance ratings, ridicule or even threats might have negative consequences for teachers’ well-being
Parenting Teenagers – Privacy Issues
Parents and teachers have sensitive issues to deal with in terms of teens’ independence and freedom of speech however, and perhaps the time has come to broach this tricky subject.
Many teens though, see their social networking site as extensions of themselves, as precious to them as their peer group, and they are fiercely protective of them. Ironically, the attribute that is perhaps most valuable to teenagers about their space is its very privacy.
Spaces are seen as places where parents and teachers cannot pry, where teenagers claim to have freedom of speech, feeling free to do as they please in a virtual Lord Of The Flies environment (William Golding, 1954).
Teens and Citizenship
Adults want to see kids grow up as responsible autonomous citizens who can think for themselves - a credit to their communities. However until they leave college, many still need guidance and protection.
Home education in citizenship, inter-personal skills and media could help. Parents tread a thin line when raising issues of invasion of privacy of teens’ social networking spaces. They can however, stay abreast of developments in social networking, join a different site themselves, chat to their teens’ friends’ parents and keep an eye on media stories.
Troubled Teens and Debating Skills
Adults who nurture a supportive debating environment in homes and classrooms can raise contentious issues like internet bullying and network privacy round the table. Troubled teens can be encouraged to have their say, gaining experience in how to articulate their point of view clearly, and in allowing others to do the same. Then it is the adults’ turn to speak. Worrying consequences of negative criticism can be suggested. Sometimes kids deliberately give the impression that they have not listened to, or accepted, a different opinion. But many a kid has a good heart and will think quietly about what has been said.
Governments could ensure that these citizenship issues are added to their school curriculum. Hopefully teens will act upon advice and resist pressure from peers to engage in intimidating practices online.
One day it could be them!
