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I was giving presentations at a school in Pennsylvania (last week) and got to the point in my presentation with parents and staff in the district about the risks and benefits associated with online social networking.  When talking about the issues, I try to be reasonably impartial – simply presenting the facts as I see them.  When pressed, however, I generally concede to my audiences that I believe the benefits to outweigh the risks – especially when these sites are used appropriately and responsibly.  One concerned parent in the audience had trouble with this.  His argument was that the risks clearly outweighed any potential benefit from sites like MySpace and Facebook and that they should therefore be avoided altogether by adolescents.  Instead of arguing with him, I decided to open it up to the audience and several folks identified a number of potential benefits of social networking.  So clearly there are benefits.  The question remains, however, do the benefits outweigh any potential risk?

I don’t know.  We are in a unique position as researchers in that we see the best and worst of online social networking.  We talk to adolescents (and adults for that matter) who have been harassed through these sites.  On the other hand, we also see creative writing and other expressions of adolescent identity depicted on the sites.   So what do you think?  Weigh in with your thoughts about whether or not we should encourage youth to participate in online social networking web sites.

CNN posted an interesting story about teachers setting up MySpace pages and “friending” their students…and about a Missouri legislator sponsoring a bill banning elementary school teachers from doing so.  I was talking to Justin about this, and we both agree that a state bill banning this activity is completely overboard (another example of how politicians feed into the existing moral panic about these sites).  We also both agree that school districts should have their own policies about whether teachers and students can interact through social networking sites.  My personal opinion is that the vast majority of teachers and students would use the tool for beneficial and productive purposes, but that there is a slippery slope effect that would take place.  It is way too easy to move from talking about school assignments to asking more “personal” (though innocent) questions to sharing private worldviews and engaging in candid self-disclosure with another person online.  Anonymity and geographical distance while online, coupled with feelings of loneliness and the desire to connect with someone (anyone) when individuals interact through computer-mediated communication, make inappropriate messages between teachers and students a very real possibility.  I feel pretty strongly about this based on communications research done in the evolution of romantic relationships on the Internet.  Yes, I am aware of age and maturity differences between teachers and students.  Yes, I am aware that some might think I’m being a bit overprotective and old-school.  I just believe that the standard way of communication between elementary and secondary school teachers and students is perfectly fine and may not need enhancing.  Students need to learn to talk with competence and eloquence in-person with adults, rather than having the crutch of typing things out all the time.  This comes with opportunity and practice.  With post-secondary instructors and students – the potential for problems still exist, but I am much more fine with using social networking sites to connect with each other for the purposes of education and learning.  This topic is super fascinating and I would love to hear more thoughts.  Clearly I could go on, but I will leave it for now at that.

A new report was released last week that zeroed in on online social interaction among youth between the ages of 8 and 12.  The “Tween Internet Safety Survey” found that at least half lie about their age online (in keeping with our own findings from discussions with kids around the nation).  They also found that approximately half of those 11- and 12-year-olds have their own cell phones.  This number seems a bit high to me, but the research was conducted among children with “online access” – and so that population may have more access to technology (and wealth) than a completely random group of kids.  Finally, there seems to be some sort of a divide between 8-10 and 11-12, in that the latter group participates significantly more online with personal email, instant messaging, texting, and sending multimedia over their cell phones.  Many parents are deciding to allow increased computer- and cell-phone use when their children venture into middle school and the data reflects this.  With more kids embracing technology in elementary school, though, similar findings in the future will trend in that direction.  This has positives and negatives.  Our hope is that parents educate their kids before providing the technology, and that teachers and administrators proactively fill in the gaps.