Social Media Will Haunt You!

There is a great article at EduGeek Journal on how social media can result in undesired consequences. I want students and families to be aware of the risks and the responsibilities when it comes to using social media!  My recommendation is:

Don't use Social Media if you are not prepared for the consequences!

The blog discusses a story about a student posting a hate screed against a teacher on Facebook. The suspended student encouraged other students to also post hateful speech on her Facebook wall.  The student was suspended for her actions and as expected in America, the student is suing.

The blog is a great summary of positions on both sides of the "free speech" aisle - especially when it involves the education community. The situation raises many, many issues that students, families, schools, colleges and employers are just beginning to experience with social media "publishing".

What I find most illuminating is how NO ONE can agree on what net-based Social Media represents when it comes to "speech".

• Is it private free speech like "talking over a burger" or is it "print publishing" because it can be seen and read virtually forever everywhere?
• Does a private citizen have the right to publish an "opinion" and the opinion of others for public consumption OR is it "hate" speech that needs to be punished? 
• Is it private speech or is it "first amendment" press?
• Is it private speech or public incitement? 
• Is calling for an improper act with Social Media protected speech or opinion or something to be prosecuted?
• Does the "permanent nature", easy accessibility and freedom to forward virtually everywhere impact the free speech of the author if social media is used?

Facebook, MySpace and blogs are the equivalent of publishing private magazines and newspapers. Twitter is a public miniblog unless everything you do is a direct tweet. Even if taken down by the web host, many people print hard copy of sites to prove it once contained the information.And the print copy  is forwarded via the web after being scanned!

Once something has been forwarded, it will have an almost infinite life. How many times have you received the same set of cute puppy or kitten pictures from 3 different sets of friends?  Now imagine that the information is juicy gossip or negative information! As many celebrities have discovered, virtually everything posted to the web is stored somewhere and can be retrieved and passed around the world. 

Regardless of how this case turns out, this case and a growing number of others shows me that there is a BIG danger for students and others who fail to use social media in a positive way.  There are already stories about how social media information was used for denial of admissions to a college, kept someone from getting a job or even got users suspended or fired.

I agree with Matt Crosslin who posted the article that regardless of how the "legal" world spins this, you should ALWAYS be ready to take the responsibility for the action of posting, period.  Pulling out the "First Amendment" every time someone doesn't like the consequences of their postings is a disservice to the Amendment. If you do something "stupid" or hurtful on the web, be prepared for the fallout.

I recommend the simple guideline: "Don't post it if you don't want your grandmother to see it".  I also like what my mother used to say when I spread gossip: "if you can't say something nice, don't day anything at all".

Comments

[Matt Crosslin]

Thanks for agreeing with me on this one - I wonder if a student is going to find my post someday and bury it with "You don't know what you are talking about" comments :) You make an excellent point on how anything put online lives on even after it is deleted. Google is constantly caching web pages, not to mention archiving projects like the Way Back Machine. Even if those don't catch something, people also need to realize that just deleting something doesn't remove it from the website even. Sites like FaceBook and Twitter are database driven, and we better believe that they keep EVERYTHING just to cover themselves. When we press delete, it just switches a database field from 'visible' to 'not visible'.

I also think that people don't realize that this student could have expressed disagreement with the teacher all she wanted... and could have even asked if other people also had problems. The line was crossed when she encouraged others to express their hatred. But she always had the freedom to say "I am not happy with the way this class was handled."