My sister and I were discussing the Facebook phenomenon yesterday, and she was surprised by a few of the things that I shared with her that I have learned in our class. I told her about potential employers checking out their applicants on Facebook, and she was shocked that anyone would do that. The next thing she said was that she would be switching her account to private. It made me wonder how many people actually know that it may not be just friends and acquaintances who are checking out their FB accounts. Finding a job is hard enough, but to lose a job because of something posted on a networking site would be awful. I guess if you don't think about the consequences of posting inappropriate pictures or messages, you will have no one to blame but yourself.
My students and I also discussed FB in class, and many of them had stories about teachers joining under an alias and watching the students. I find all of this a little bit creepy on both sides. Judgement ultimately lies with the account holder, but should instructors be spying on their students? It seems as though there are some ethical issues involving FB that I'm not quite sure how to deal with. Should employers be examining the personal lives of their applicants? I don't know how to answer these questions, and I don't know if there are any easy answers.
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I would argue, too, that you'd have to look at the intentions of the "spyer" to see if what they are doing is ethical. I don't use facebook, but I've mentioned in class that a coworker does. As a coach, she has used an alias to get on her players' fbs. She wants to know who is accepting strangers as friends. She also checks to see that their profile is set to private. She is upfront about doing this. If she is accepted into a player's fb, she talks to them about the dangers of inviting in strangers; if she is accepted again later on, she talks to the parents. I guess I know she is not a "sicko" or "pervert," so what she's doing seems acceptable to me. And I hope that someday someone would let me know if my kids were being careless on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteStudents do need to be taught about the dangers of FB and the need for caution. I think that is part of computer literacy. Jenn's friend's approach is one way to teach students. I hope they are getting the message from lots of different sources.
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