Children Online: The Impact of FaceBook

The site Children Online has a number of excellent articles, but one you should definitely read is The Impact of FaceBook on Our Students by educators Doug Fodeman and Marje Monroe, co-directors of Children Online. To download the article, go to the site and select Articles. The piece is also available in the Resources section of the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) site. While the article targets FaceBook, the ideas could be applied to any social networking site. Among the topics the authors discuss are: social networking takes a LOT of time; there is a false sense of privacy on social networks; there are 1000's of scams targeting teens on social networks; Spyware and Adware installations are very serious concerns; screens act as a moral disconnect for many of our students; students have very little knowledge about how much they are being marketed to, how their purchasing decisions and attitudes are being manipulated, how their personal information is used, and even how valuable that personal information is; teens are increasingly using social networks to avoid difficult face-to-face conversations; the meaning of friend is changing, which puts children and teens at risk; and our students are turning more and more to relationships online. Scary stuff indeed.