School Hires Company To Monitor Students’ Social Media Posts

Parent Cafe
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<p>No, you wouldn’t. If you had made a PUBLIC post using that phrase, someone would look at that PUBLIC post to see the context in which you had used the word that triggered the software.</p>

<p>In other words, the company that was hired doesn’t read all the facebook, twitter and other posts students publish. They just look at the posts that use terms the software programs “think” MAY indicate there is a problem.</p>

<p>I don’t purport to know all the words that trigger it, but personally, I don’t see this as a big deal.</p>

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For example, solutions like saying private things in private rather than in public. It’s a simple concept. If I wanted to say something privately to Ethel or Prudence I wouldn’t shout it across the way or across the restaurant table we’re sharing with other people - I’d make sure we were in a private space.</p>

<p>This use of social media is the same - if you post it with no privacy controls it’s the same is speaking across the shared restaurant table or shouting across the way. You can’t reasonably have an expectation of privacy if you’re not being private. And yes, it’s annoying that those people at the other table to overhear or eavesdrop on your conversation but it’s up to you to not permit that to happen by protecting yourself and conversing in a private area.</p>

<p>It’s common sense.</p>

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<p>It’s common sense</p>

<p>Unfortunately, some seem to be genetically predisposed to losing common sense every time they use a cell phone, until they turn into Miley Cyrus.</p>

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<p>I would love if parents would take on the responsibility for monitoring what their kids do. I do, but many parents don’t. Even the “good” parents. I’ve heard “you must be mistaken” too many times. Yes, it is a fine line, but cyber bullying not only involves events that happen at school, but they also cause the school environment to become unbearable and emotionally unsafe for some students. My D has a right to attend school without having everyone stare or point at her because someone started a rumor that went viral on social media. If the school handles it well, they might be able to prevent a few suicides, and maybe teach the bullies a few manners. Even if they don’t punish a student for the things they post, they can and should counsel them regarding the consequences of their actions - both for themselves and others. Kids often don’t realize just how big the “grapevine” has become due to social media.</p>

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<p>While I am not necessarily advocating using education resources in this manner we have not figured out how to deal with cyber bullying. I know bullying has been around forever but cyber bullying doesn’t leave kids. There is no safe harbor at home since they are always tuned in to Facebook or phones or twitter. It is awful and so public. It is the parents responsibility to monitor but as one of the few who actively monitors that isn’t happening. Those are the same parents who will claim free speech when their S calls your D a _----.</p>

<p>To the arguments. On free speech I think most of you have taught your kids, “just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you share it publicly”. And freedom of speech dies not protect you from the consequences of what you say. Too many adults do not understand this. I posted the employee situation earlier because I have had to deal with this with employees who think freedom of speech means they can post like barbarians and no one can do anything about their free speech. Wrong.</p>

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<p>I am a student at a GUSD high school and I can tell you that students post many inappropiate and idiotic things that they wouldn’t want their parents to see. A reason the program went into effect was because a kid at a local high school did suicide, and there were other attempted suicides at other schools within this area. I myself don’t have a facebook or any other social media with my actual name on it for this reason. $40,000 is a great sum of money that my district can use to purchase new books, but it is better spent on this program as they faced a lawsuit that may have costed the district millions of dollars.</p>

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<p>I hate Facebook. My kids are prohibited from setting up accounts, but, really they have not had the desire - they find Facebook and most social media stupid and a waste of time and they came to that conclusion themselves (thank goodness.) Unfortunately for them, when they were in the public schools, their friends who were on Facebook every afternoon and night were some of the dullest people ever, having nothing to say in person, because they had said it all the night before either on their Facebook pages or via texting. I have used the internet for twenty years and social media, to me, is the least valuable product to have come from the development of the web. Yes, I still find value in forums like this, but this forum looks more like the original forums where people share valuable information, and people take that information and go use it in their real lives. Facebook is a narcissistic, gossipy cesspool and the recorded waste of too many lives.</p>

<p>How about the schools do what they are intended to do: educate? Educate students to read, write, and do their arithmetic, but also educate them about the implications of handing over their private lives to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, who has made a fortune on people giving away their privacy for free. Educate them about how to treat people with kindness and how to be students with integrity. Teachers and administrators have always been pathetic about taking care of bullies, but, at least when I was in school, once the bully was discovered, he/she usually made a beeline for the continuation high school, never to be seen again at the regular high school. Time to bring back those continuation high schools. And, yes, parents - so gullible, so addicted to their own Facebook pages that they don’t think to monitor their kids’ pages. Every parent who allows their teens unsupervised access to the internet ought to download a free trial version of any keystroke-capturing software program and run it without their kids’ knowledge, and really take a look at what their kids are doing. In fact, if the school district is going to spend any money on this, I would recommend they get a group price on this spy software and encourage parents to use it. Let’s just bring everything into the light of day.</p>

<p>Parents are the appropriate authorities for handling their kids, so help them to do their job, but don’t undermine them. Those parents who are still clueless about the dangers of the internet or the negative influence of the internet upon their kids may wake up if the school district gives them a reason to do so. For those parents who have been doing their jobs, well, leave them alone, and let them handle their own kids.</p>

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<p>And even if a student bullied on the Internet is not on social media, the damage is being done when other students see the posts/tweets/texts. chesterton – you talked about Facebook. As bad as it can be, it has nothing on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.</p>

<p>Suggestions for schools:</p>

<p>1) Confiscate all visible or audible cell phones, iPods, etc. at school. Every single time. Return them at the end of the day, but require that the next time a parent or guardian must come to school to retrieve the device. Define the consequences (whatever they are) for a third violation.</p>

<p>2) Get the following word to parents through meetings, e-mail, website, automated phone messages, and letters (i.e. give them no excuse for not knowing): They are responsible for monitoring their children’s use of the Internet and social media. Give them instructions on how to do so and tell them that they and their children will be held responsible for what their children post if it results in harm to anyone or contains any pornographic content or threats. Tell them what the consequences will be if their children are found to be using social media at school or taking pictures of other classmates at school without the school and the classmates’ express permission. Encourage parents to be on the lookout for cyberbullying by checking on their children’s friends’ accounts.</p>

<p>3) Require every student to attend an assembly/meeting to talk about cyberbullying. Define the term and lay down the law to them that such behavior will not be tolerated and that they will be held responsible for what they post. Tell them what the consequences will be for what behavior.</p>

<p>Some schools are already doing some of the above. Our school offers seminars on cyberbullying every year. It does some of the education component, but the parents who show up are always the more responsible, aware ones anyway. All parents need to hear this, and they should hear that THEY are responsible for monitoring and will be expected to do so. I’m sorry that the schools have to be saddled with any more responsibility for children whose parents will not parent.</p>

<p>My high school-aged children were/are not on social media. However, after I was alerted to possible bullying of my son, I started checking the Facebook and Twitter pages of his classmates. Two of them were posting rude things about my son, but they were posting extremely cruel pictures (taken at school) and comments about some of their other classmates. The targeted classmates were overweight and socially awkward, and I was incensed. I went to an administrator with my concerns and she was shocked because one of the bullying students was thought to be a “model student”. The school confronted the students, but I am not privy to what happened after that. I have checked those students’ (still public) accounts since then, and they are back at it. So here I will go, back to the school. If I see any threats, however, I will go to the police.</p>

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<p>^^^ </p>

<p>MANY parents don’t like the idea of taking phones away from students during the school day because they are paranoid about school shootings or other disasters. They have tried to implement this in our area several times, but parents argue, but what if the kids NEED to call for help and then don’t have a way. Also HS students are very good at communicating on their phones without looking at it. Even when they are not supposed to have their phones out during class, most can text with their phones in their pockets.</p>

<p>Would the rule about taking pictures without the classmates permission apply to the yearbook staff too. How about small schools without a large yearbook staff. Some of the best pictures included in my son’s year book are candid shots and can be incredible memories for these kids. This year our local school implemented a ‘no cameras allowed during the school day at all’ policy. It’s sad that those memories won’t be captured any more.</p>

<p>Someone mentioned Miley Cyrus a few posts back. To reiterate my point from earlier - does everyone not understand that the ENTIRE nation is bullying her right now and that the way we are acting, what we demonstrate as ‘acceptible’ behavior is teaching kids how they should behave. I didn’t watch her performance I really am not interested, but although she may have planned her act to include some ‘shock value’ as someone in the spotlight I think her ultimate goal was to entertain and for the audience to enjoy it. She’s just a girl. Sure she has a public face, but has anyone considered that behind closed dorrs she’s probably shedding her share of tears this week over the horrible reaction from the media and the public. Sure you can say ‘but she deserved it’…‘she was asking for it’… every 10-20 year old ‘buly’ out there will say the same - ‘well she was flirting with my boyfriend, so it’s OK I tell everyone she’s a ‘ho’ - she was asking for it’, ‘well she’s 16 and has a kid so I can call her a sl… she deserves it’, ‘he’s ■■■■■■■■ so it’s OK that I make fun of him’ (I don’t know anything about the learning disability he has), ‘she’s fat, if she didn’t want us to make fun of her she could exercise or lose weight, but she’s just fat and lazy so it’s OK that I make fun of her’</p>

<p>Until we (not as parents, but as an entire society) teach our children to behave differently it’s not going to happen</p>

<p>What if the nation was shocked by Miley deciding to OD or have another extreme negative reaction to the pressure she’s been put under this past week, how many people would point to themselves and say that ‘I was the bully. I contributed to all the bad things that were said. I have some responsiblity in this.’ My guess is not many. People still don’t really understand that their own actions are that extreme although they can easily point the fingers at others…</p>

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<p>That is just plain nonsense. Just like Madonna before her, Miley and here advisors knew exactly what she was doing to change her image and raise her profile; in “The Industry”, trash sells big time.</p>

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<p>I find it odd that some people who seem to be supporting this policy are using as one of their justifications that it is likely to be ineffective–that kids will just change their privacy settings. If this is true, isn’t this a huge waste of money?</p>

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<p>@bluebayou -</p>

<p>it’s mostly irrelevant even if it was completely planned and if Miley is proud of her actions… we, as a nation, are still teaching children through our actions that it’s
OK to mock, harass, make fun of, and speak badly about someone who behaves in a way we don’t approve of. </p>

<p>Remember ACTIONS speak louder than words</p>

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<p>I strongly disagree. Since Miley’s act was purposely planned, and obtained the desired effect, why would she care one iota about those who are ‘making fun’ or her or ‘disapprove of’ her? (Thus, no “bullying” possible.)</p>

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<p>If it gets kids to change their privacy settings, IMO, it is money well spent!</p>

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<p>Well, it would be under the auspices of the school, so the school would give permission. Also, at our school, we have to sign a paper at the beginning of the year as to whether we give permission for our students’ pictures to appear in the yearbook, in the local newspaper, on the website, etc. That would probably cover the permission angle (given that I probably should have “permission of a parent/guardian” rather than permission of the student him/herself).</p>

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<p>Privacy settings are no guarantee of privacy, and students and their parents need to know this. Once something gets into cyberspace, it cannot be recalled. Anyone can “share” a post or take a screen shot of it and distribute that screen shot. I could go online, take screen shots of a Facebook friend’s posts, even if that friend has restricted access to only a few people, then put them on a website for all to see. (I haven’t actually done this, but I could. :)) People concerned about the NSA finding their personal posts/texts/etc. ought to be more concerned about their own actions. Putting anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t be proud to say or claim in public is either ignorant or just plain foolish. In other words, don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your parents, grandparents, spouse, boss, school principal, and (if applicable) members of your religious community to see. We need to do everything we can to communicate this to our children and society in general.</p>

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<p>I don’t know how many students the school district has, but what if they instead just gave every student $20 to change their privacy settings? Hell, maybe turn it into an educational thing, instead of $20 maybe they’ll buy every student one book of their choice or something. </p>

<p>I guess 40K isn’t much though. Maybe it’s not so horribly spent. It mostly just “feels” like a waste.</p>

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<p>Just look at this as CC moderators checking and editing your posts. I think it’ll help build self-control and netiquette among kids.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure if the keyword search will work terribly well if it doesn’t include slang or misspelled words. Most posts may not include those target words. Also, a lot of video or pictures posts go unlabeled anyway.</p>

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<p>Also,
@chesterton I might be getting the wrong vibe from your post but it seems to scream “my kids and i are better than you for not using Facebook/similar sites.”
I have found Facebook really good for keeping in touch with family and friends that are far away. It’s just more convenient than email. You can quickly exchange photos, messages, and videos. Keeping in touch with people from other countries can get pricey without Facebook, which is just, in my opinion, a better version of email. After I moved I know that social media really helped me adjust to feeling alone in the months before I started school. I don’t mean to attack you or anything, but I really don’t see Facebook as bad when used appropriately and moderately. </p>

<p>I’d also like to mention that I have been sent very mean messages, but it only lasts until they realize ill never reply. i often dont see these hurtful messages until much later because messages sent from non-friends dont come up in my unread mailbox anyway. But from my personal experience, I’ve never seen anything public or in someone’s real name when bullying. I don’t read news feed often, but I’m sure there are people posting drunken pictures (although I’m not sure if this is the schools business or not?)</p>

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<p>this is crazy</p>

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<p>I believe that South Park once did an episode where a bunch of over-anxious over protective parents made their children wear helmets that tracked where they were and what they did at all times. It seems like the next logical step no?</p>

<p>Everyone on this thread should watch this: <a href=“http://www.watchcartoononline.com/south-park-season-6-episode-11-child-abduction-is-not-funny[/url]”>http://www.watchcartoononline.com/south-park-season-6-episode-11-child-abduction-is-not-funny&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;