3 Ways to Inform Your Students About the Benefits & Dangers of Social Media

1. Give Them a Reading List

Perhaps you teach a first year seminar course or maybe you just send out a welcome email to your incoming students. Anytime that you have an opportunity to share information about the appropriate use of social networks, I believe that you should do it. Students are not receiving this information from high schools or parents yet so academic advisors (and other student affairs professionals) need to fill this role.

Some suggested articles to get you started:

50 Social Networking Rules for College Students

6 Ways to Connect with Millennials About Social Networking


2. Friend Them

I have no problem accepting a friend request of a student who sends one. It seems to facilitate communication between us; especially with those students who do not respond to regular email. Sensitive or confidential information is never discussed via this medium and really is more of a way for my students to reach out to me and ask questions about appointment scheduling. In addition, being able to see them on my "student" friend list helps me to keep track of them and contact each of them more frequently than if I only could see their name and email address in an excel file. For some reason, the pictures really help.

By accepting these friend requests, we are again being given an opportunity to "teach" our students about the proper use of social networks. We don't even need to troll through their profiles to do this. I simply send out links to all of my student "friends" on facebook about using LinkedIn for professional networking or relevant news articles on the uses and abuses of social networking. This way I am providing them with information while at the same time allowing them to engage with me in a way that they are comfortable and familiar with.

3. Search Them

Some of the students in my first year experience told me about a peer mentor (student assistant) in another section who was allowed to go onto Facebook and unearth inappropriate material on the first year student profile pages. While I wouldn't advocate going this far in most classrooms, I do think that it might be helpful to surf through some profile pages to get a sense of what the general student populous at your institution is putting online.

Are the benefits of social networking being emphasized on your campus? Do students seem to understand the privacy settings that are available to them? Perhaps you'll stumble across a really great profile which can help you speak to other students about what to do to create a successful and appropriate profile.

If you know a student particularly well or perhaps are working with the student in a mentor/mentee relationship it might be entirely appropriate to go over the profile pages together to ensure that everything is on the up and up. This alleviates the issue of breaching a students trust while also providing the opportunity for a "teachable moment".