Social networks and privacy

As I've said in previous posts, as a high school librarian I am very concerned with the safety and digital footprint of my students. It is anathema to me to live my life so completely online as they do, the idea of sharing what I did last night, what my friends did, what I drank, what I ate, who I don't like, who I love, who I'm mad at etc. etc. I grew up in an era where we only shared these things with close friend groups and we probably shared the information either online or by telephone both venues of relatively private communication. However, the way my students view their social lives is completely different. These students have never lived without the Internet. The Internet to them, is a natural form of communication as the telephone was to us in the 1980's and 1990's. Therefore their view of privacy and communication is entirely different which doesn't make it wrong. As stated in the Wikidentities article by Mallan and Giardina, our students are concerned about their privacy but they employ "privacy pragmatism" meaning that they are willing to trade some of their privacy for something good. They want to participate in the online community - in fact if they don't participate in an online community they are shut out of most of their peers lives. Having an online presence is the new norm. That means that it is OK with them if a friend of a friend finds out that they got drunk last night and they don't neccessarily mind if 2 billion people find out that they broke up with "Bobby" last night. They are aware of the necessity of using the available privacy settings offered by Facebook and other SNS's. They are aware, perhaps even more so than we adults, that these settings are not impervious.  What we need to teach them is to be more aware of what they are personally posting within the context of those privacy settings. Teens remain impulsive so we need to focus on helping them monitor their own impulsivity in postings. We need to discuss issues like posting sexually suggestive pictures, pictures of themselves intoxicated or doing drugs, posting phone #'s or personal email accounts and other issues like these. We cannot tell them not to live their lives in such an open way - they've already drunk the kool-aid and it's not going to change - trying to change theit attitude is not going to succeed and we'll just be wasting valuable time that we could spend helping them to simply be more reflective about their posts and the potential repercussions of what they've posted. It's also important that we teach them to respect others privacy and discourage creeping, posting stuff on their friends pages and other activities that might infringe on someone else's privacy. We need to teach them that privacy is a two-way street. School's also need to develop policies that deal with issues of creeping, hacking, etc. Because teens are impulsive we need to set up safety nets o protect them as much as possible while they are learning to become good digital citizens. We need to allow them the space to practice and make mistakes - learning from mistakes will help them become practical users of these sites which is what we want. Limiting their access doesn't work - it just forces them to be subversive and dishonest. We must maintain an honest and open communication regarding Internet and social networkign use.  Lastly, we need to be mindful of our own digital footprints and practice what we preach. Schools need to establish a social networking policy around SNS's and being friends with students on these sites. It is for our own protection.