<p>The point is the monitoring of ALL students facebook pages not just those causing a disruption. The security company is not your “friend”. If a wide enough net is cast the innocent will get caught in it. It is fear-mongering on the part of the security company to make money from taxpayers.
And what is really public?–sure, your profile is “public” but so are your conversations in a restaurant, but neither should be monitored by a third uninvited party for the express purpose of spying on you. And I think that applies to students as well as adults.<br>
What does this teach kids? It’s okay for “big brother” to spy on you, that it’s for “your own good”. We end up with a nation of people that think government is supposed to protect you from everything–I think sometimes we’re already there.
Yes, cyber-bullying does occur–but guess what? The cases didn’t need a security company to bring them to light.</p>
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<p>OTOH, the schools are between a rock and a hard place. When the next Columbine befalls a school, and the district has the means to possibly prevent it (by searching social media sites), some attorneys will likely (successfully?) claim that the district had an obligation to investigate. (Not saying that its right, just sayin’…)</p>
<p>BINGO. If it can be known legally they have to try to know it.</p>
<p>So should they hire private detectives to surveil students’ houses? I don’t think that would be illegal.</p>
<p>Cost would be a consideration too. If they can have media monitored at low cost that would be expected then. Hiring 1000 private eyes at 1000/day–not so much.What would a prudent person do?</p>
<p>Maybe the school should monitor the parents’ social media. That might provide even more opportunities to help the kids. And perhaps the parents should band together and hire somebody to monitor the teachers and school administrators.</p>
<p>Where does it end?</p>
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<p>There are many, many examples of cyberbullying that haven’t been brought to light at all. I have brought cases to the attention of school administrators and parents who were unaware, but I could go on several social media sites right now, spend an hour and find several more that wouldn’t have come to light otherwise. Much of what I would find (indeed have found) would be messages/tweets during school hours. Some would be pictures of targeted classmates taken surreptitiously during school. With a little delving, I could find this behavior going on in both public and private schools in my state and throughout the country. It would include vulgar comments about classmates’ private body parts and graphic descriptions of desired (often violent) sex acts with those students. Negative comments about schools are a drop in the bucket compared to the other things being said.</p>
<p>How do we deal with cyberbullying and its consequences? Are students who use the Internet to harass and threaten others not to be held responsible for their behavior? Doesn’t a school have the responsibility to protect students from other students during school, even if the bullying behavior is through iPhones and texts? What about outside of school?</p>
<p>Again, I don’t have the answers, except for this: We can’t just throw up our hands and say we can’t do anything. Students have committed suicide because of cyberbullying. Many others live in fear. Anyone who doesn’t think this a problem is either totally clueless or callously indifferent to bullied students.</p>
<p>Heck, no. That’s not ok. My kids’ accounts are locked down and they are very careful, because they have US for parents, and we tell them about the constant invasions of privacy, and that posting is like shouting from the rooftop all your business. I agree with Dietz that that the encroachment of the schools further and further into parenting decisions is highly problematic.</p>
<p>Monitoring needs to take place BY PARENTS. It’s not the job of the schools to parent YOUR kids.</p>
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<p>No kidding! The fact that Americans take this invasion of privacy rolling over just boggles my mind. They have been appropriately indoctrinated by the government for years.</p>
<p>The Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves.</p>
<p>Marsian, WHERE are the parents? Do they not monitor their childrens’ usage of social media or the internet at ALL? That’s incredibly stupid, because if your kid does something, guess who is legally responsible? The one paying the bill for the internet usage or cell phone.</p>
<p>I read the article. It’s only a keyword search. So, if you don’t use words like bomb, retaliate, torture, rape, etc., you don’t have a problem. </p>
<p>My kid’s old high school had software like that for school computers. Email went through it.</p>
<p>At some point the schools monitoring ‘private’ communications also involves 4th amendment rights which protects people against unreasonable SEARCHES and seizures. Yes, it’s only intended to protect from searches by police, but it becomes grey if schools start turning students into police because of something they misinterpreted or misunderstood to be threatening. </p>
<p>Where I live the local police had an article published prior to the 4th of July parade saying that ANYONE attending the parade who was carrying a large bag or backpack this year was subject to be searched??? I get that people were paranoid because of what happened in Boston, but we don’t live in a police state!!!</p>
<p>Cyberbullying happens, but bullying was happening long before the internet came into being. Maybe it’s just that it’s ‘public’ now and adults can’t stay in denial.</p>
<p>I admit to being atypical. I was ‘bullied’ throughout my school years. I was very shy in grade school and had one very close female friend that I spent all my time with. I was labelled a lesbian long before I even knew what the term meant. I thought when I went to junior high I would get a fresh start, but the label followed and I’d get people pointing and whispering on the school bus that I’d never even met. On top of that in junior high I had a couple girls choose me as their target to harass at every opportunity. Teachers ignored any time I asked for help. The worst day was when I pulled a clump of my own hair out (with my hands while at school) after they decided that was where to put their used gum and I was too embarrassed to go ask for help. My family moved when I was in the midst of junior high and I was extremely thankful. But they moved to an upper-middle class suburb where I continued to be harassed because I didn’t have deisgner clothes and hadn’t spent hundreds of dollars on cosmetics and accessories. I still have no desire to go back for class reunions more than 25 years later.</p>
<p>I had very low self esteem when I began college, but then I met people that I had things in common with, that were willing to get to know the real me and I started gaining a lot more confidence. For me, the experience made me stronger. I’m now an incredibly strong, opinionated, independent woman who has absolutely no problem with my ego (well except for those that claim it may be too big). </p>
<p>Children learn from adults. So long as we, as adults, judge others, children are going to learn that ‘skill’. The media publishes worst dressed lists for celebrities, the nation watches as we choose Miss America and Miss USA and Miss Universe all the time sitting in front of our TV talking about who’s attractive and who’s not, people still make snide, muffled comments about people who go out in public in clothes that don’t match or don’t fit right, people still mock over weight or elderly people in bathing suits on the beach, many comediens make their livings mocking people that seem less intelligent, being even a couple pounds overweight has resulted in an multi-billion dollar industry that gets as extreme as women using feeding tubes to feed themselves, people pause and stare at people who are disfigured or disabled… this is where children learn that it’s OK for them to judge and mock others for being different, it’s what we as a society teach them to do.</p>
<p>Perhaps the solution is to teach children from a young age coping mechanisms and work on developing their self esteem, because bullying will NEVER be completely eliminated.</p>
<p>This doesn’t particularly bother me. Monitoring has been going on for ages. Vanderbilt Hospital monitors social media to make sure docs (residents and fellows) aren’t saying anything problematic. I’m a lawyer, so my view of it might be different, but, frankly, there really isn’t any privacy anymore.</p>
<p>jrcsmom–we now live in a police state.<br>
Mowc–just because something has been going on for ages doesn’t mean it’s right. Lack of privacy for others doesn’t bother anyone but by the time it happens personally it will be too late because it’s been going on for ages and everyone has accepted it as the norm.</p>
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<p>What boggles my mind is the attitude of the young 'ens (and the 'rents that support them). They freely and openly post anything and everything in the public spaces of social media, and then try to claim its a “private conversation.” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>A keyword search on things that the user does not keep protected with available privacy guards simply does not bother me. If you want privacy, stay off of social media!</p>
<p>A lot of people keep saying “Well I’m a good parent, I do XYZ to make sure my kid doesn’t do these things on Facebook/twitter/tumblr/4chan/reddit/myspace/friendster/etc” and that isn’t really the issue here with cyberbullying. The issue is when your well behaved kid is the subject of bullying online, and other people in the school are the primary audience. If I take a picture of your kid after school, draw phalluses going into his/her mouth with a comment about them being a knobgobbler, does the school have any sort of burden to stop or do something about it?</p>
<p>When I was in school, prior to enough people being online for cyberbullying to be a concern, there was a policy that anything happening outside of the school wasn’t their business. What did the bullies do? They started their harassment right after people got off the school bus in the afternoon, and before the bus showed up in the morning. I knew kids whose parents had to drive them each way to school because the school said it wasn’t their business and the bully’s parents didn’t care.</p>
<p>It’s extremely easy to skate around this type of policy.</p>
<p>In my experience, most of the cyberbullying that occurs is on sites like Twitter or ■■■■■■ (as opposed to Facebook), where anonymity is very easy to achieve.</p>
<p>On Twitter, I can go by a fake alias, with a completely unrelated handle, and lock my account. This prevents my tweets from being retweeted so that people I do not approve cannot see my tweets. And even if they did see my tweets, they would never be able to prove it was me unless they went to extreme (and probably illegal) measures.</p>
<p>Anyways, I don’t know how they can follow up on the accounts of every student. It’s not like social media accounts are tied to a social security number. How do they plan to find and identify the accounts owned by students?</p>
<p>jonri–so if you say “He’s the bomb!” you could get in trouble?</p>
<p>Can’t kids make their accounts private so no security company could see their posts if they’re not “friends” or “following” them?</p>
<p>Granted, a lot of kids don’t make them private. I am appalled at what I can see on friends’ kids’ pages, and the kids don’t know me from Adam.</p>
<p>“It’s extremely easy to skate around this policy”
“Can’t kids make their accounts private so no security company could see their posts?”</p>
<p>Yes, you can do both these things. Citizens come up with solutions to invasion of privacy and intrusion into their lives on a regular basis.</p>