Students at schools nationwide only know social media as it currently is, as they were born into this new technology. Despite warnings and conversations, there are still many issues related to social media use among school age kids, including cyber bullying, inappropriate image/content sharing, and even threats. School districts realize that they have to be proactive and continually monitor social activity, but one story that has made the news recently highlights how schools are staring to have these conversations.
A bomb threat made on a social media app spurred a forum for parents of three schools in Pacific Grove, California recently. The forum addressed parents and provided further education on the use of social media and how to educate students on responsibility online. It again touched on the concept that there is no such thing as “anonymous” online anymore, despite what some apps will suggest to teens. It’s surprising that this continues to be a talking point, one that most would realize by now. However, when facing teenagers, who think they are invincible and typically still believe that whatever they read online is true, it’s not really that surprising.
Despite continued education in this area, schools still face a challenge when it comes to social media usage and identifying issues before they become problematic. Thankfully, technological advances have made this a bit easier. Schools have been turning to social media monitoring to actively monitor social media activity among students and even around school facilities. This can be helpful in many ways:
- By monitoring social media activity via a location based program, schools can monitor school events to proactively pinpoint any potential issues related to violence, for example.
- Continual location based monitoring can also pinpoint issues with gang related violence, threats, or even students that are struggling in some way, whether it’s emotionally, peer related, or the like.
- As teens reach the point of graduation, schools can use a social media background check program to assist high school students with reviewing their social media activity and provide further education on the importance of maintaining a positive online presence.
It’s clear that continued education among teens and even pre-teens is much needed, and will continue to be an important factor in maintaining social responsibility. More and more apps are promoting “anonymous” social posting, yet this isn’t entirely true and can be misleading to teens. What they don’t realize is that they can still be identified online, even if they don’t tag their location or use their given name as a screen name; social media monitoring programs have become more sophisticated, and as schools turn to such tools, this will be brought to light and hopefully give students some food for thought.
Continued conversation and education among school administrators, parents, and students will help build this generation into a socially responsible group. However, it’s a long road and one that has a lot of twists and turns; the more that kids understand about social media content and monitoring, the better off they’ll be in the long run.