Thinking about thinking about social networks

I had an interesting conversation with a fearful parent today centered around social networking, and its potential for endangering kids. In trying to remain professional and clear-eyed, and to resist knee-jerk reactions, I tried hard to see her viewpoint, which, if I understood correctly, was that a school needs to take a position on (read "against") the use of social networks, not just within the building, but outside of it in everyday life as well. She agreed that education about social networking was important for the school to provide, but I think that we parted ways in our understanding of what "education about social networking" means.

My understanding of that is exposure to and education about proactively building a profile or "digital footprint" if you will, that accurately and safely reflects both the person that a student is today, and who she hopes to become. The temptations are many, and the carelessness and invincibility of youth may indeed lead to indiscretions online, but this is certainly as true or more true in the offline world.

In truth, it boils down to this: can we trust ourselves to teach and lead our students and our children in the right directions, and can we trust them to make good choices? Those are both frightening leaps at times, but necessary ones. We can neither abdicate our responsibility to lead them in this digital world by "opting out," nor refuse to allow them to use their sometimes tentative but often surprising decision making skills.

So, to my thinking, far from avoiding and demonizing social networking which shows no signs of going away any time soon, we need to be working with students to develop their "google results" to show who they are without overexposing their personal lives, and what they stand for without compromising their values. They need tools and options for dealing with the unpleasant, the uncomfortable, the downright wrong, so that they can be effective citizens in the global community.

What's at risk when we react in a fearful, strident way to a medium that's part and parcel of their (social)lives or their peers'(social)lives, is their dismissal of the very valuable viewpoint that we need to share with them. All those little risk-taking, hormone driven impulses just decry our staid caution as "unable to understand" how the whole thing works. And once they've dismissed us, that's when we need to worry.

danah boyd, in a recent, very thoughtful post said this: "Technology is a wonderful tool but it is not a panacea. It cannot solve all societal ills just by its mere existence." Indeed. Nor can its mere existence cause societal ills. And the sooner we understand that in this corner of the world, the better off we and our children will be.