Column: Schools right to limit use of social media

Believe me, I get it - I've got a teenager at home, myself.

Sometimes, a quick text message is the only way to get that girl's attention.

History has taught me not to bother leaving my daughter a voice mail or even an e-mail - if the message doesn't pop up on a screen in front of her nose, she'll never get it.

No, I'm not above using Facebook to call my own child to dinner, so I can see why local K-12 teachers and coaches would want to keep in touch with students through social networking sites, texts and chats.

But a few schools are talking now about limiting those channels of communication: Over at Vinton-Shellsburg, teachers and staff are strongly encouraged not to send individual messages to individual students. Linn-Mar has been working on new social networking policies since this past October. Other schools should follow their lead and look at policies that limit or prohibit staff from using those tools to communicate with individual students.

It all comes down to boundaries.

As Marshall McLuhan would say, the medium is the message. And anyone who has texted or IMed or Facebooked knows the character of those conversations are much less formal, the boundaries between personal and public much more blurred, than in any other mode of communication.

That informality flies in the face of some of the important lessons our schools are trying to teach our young people.

In many ways, school is like a workplace with training wheels. Students aren't just hanging out all day learning the three R's; they're learning to honor commitments, to communicate with superiors, to coexist with people they might not choose to hang around in their free time.

Texts along the lines of: “p8per due TOMORROW???? srsly?!?!?” are counterproductive to those larger lessons.

Call me an old fogey, but if our schools are training kids to be the leaders of tomorrow, one of the things they ought to be learning is proper communication.

Rarer, but much more important, is the fact that the boundary-blurring informality of digital communication can open the door for unscrupulous adults to prey on kids. It's another point of access for trusted adults to push inappropriate conversations, possibly relationships, with kids - something we've seen here in at least one recent case.

That may not be a problem for the majority of teachers and students. That case was an exception. But in the interest of student safety, it's the exception that demands a rule.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com