Social networking policy at work
HI!
I have been not paying much attention to LJ lately. I don’t think I have even been checking my email for a while now that I think about it. I have been in a very weird head space lately and haven’t been wanting to inflict myself on anyone. I think I am starting to dig my way out of it, though. *crosses fingers*
I am on the tech committee for the Community Ed Department for our school district. Yesterday at one of our meetings, a newer member mentioned that she had been doing some research to find out our district's policy on social networking sites. She learned that we do not have one. What she found was the following recommendation.
“IT Services recommends the following regarding social networks such as Facebook and MySpace:
- That the-Public School district staff refrain from using social networks such as Facebook, or MySpace to communicate, collaborate or contact students and parents.
- That staff use their district email accounts to correspond with students and parents regarding school assignments and activities.
- That staff use school owned web sites for posting assignments instead of Facebook or Myspace.
- That staff carefully consider what personal information they display in their public social network profile and what comments they make in online public forums.”
This gal seems to feel strongly that we should have a clear policy of the “don’t post nekkid pictures of yourself on the internet or you will be fired” variety regarding this issue. She is planning to draft up a proposal that will be discussed at our next meeting. If she does get that together and our committee approves it, it would have to go through legal, the superintendant’s office and probably the board of ed. before anything actually happens.
It seems like a particularly scary can of worms to me. I can see the value of reminding staff members that they do represent the schools when they are out in public and that they should be very careful about the things that might easily get back to students or their parents. I can definitely see the value of letting everyone in the world know that Facebook’s privacy features are unwieldy and glitchy and if you are not comfortable showing something to all of Grandma’s friends from church, maybe you shouldn’t put it up on Facebook.
However, I can also see how much of this can get far beyond the control of the particular employee. One of your friends can post a picture of you from a mutual friend’s batchelorette party and link it to you. You can have a falling out with someone to whom you had given access to potentially dangerous material which can be forwarded to your boss now that they hate you. All of your old Usenet Trek porn that you wrote as a college freshman has suddenly been indexed by Google. The list goes on forever.
Also - a clear policy is something the administration would have to enforce and might lead to squabbles between employees who had been friends turning into tattletale wars. As the current generation of young people get a bit older and start looking for jobs, the fact that they have already posted naked pictures of themselves everywhere (thesekidstodayitsnotlikewhenwewereyoung *eyeroll*) would make them ineligible for hire. Not a huge problem yet - but, eventually that will really limit the applicant pool to the geeky losers who don’t do that. The geeky losers, of course, will all be fired once their usenet porn is googleable.
I suspect that I am going to be expected to have opinions on this issue and, while I do have opinions on this issue - reasonably educated ones too as I have been active enough on social networking sites in my personal life to know the pitfalls - they are not ones I ever thought I would end up discussing at work.
Our next meeting is a couple of months away. I am hoping that the other gal’s fervor will die down a bit in the interim but, just in case, I want to be prepared to advocate for privacy rights in this discussion and am looking for any ideas on points I should raise. Keep in mind that the room will probably be against me. The only other person who I think *might* take my side on this is 22 and probably easily intimidated.
It’s hard to come up with anything because I don’t have anything specific to come up with an argument against yet.
I haven’t been terribly worried about my own internet presence because my direct manager’s husband is a prominent local attorney who is a huge privacy rights advocate and she tends to agree with him on these issues. She is, of course, retiring in a month.
*cries*
If anyone has any suggestions about what I should be looking for, I would love to hear them. I may bring a print out of this to the next meeting (with names redacted via Sharpie).
I may friendslock this post but, I don't want to do that just yet.
I have been not paying much attention to LJ lately. I don’t think I have even been checking my email for a while now that I think about it. I have been in a very weird head space lately and haven’t been wanting to inflict myself on anyone. I think I am starting to dig my way out of it, though. *crosses fingers*
I am on the tech committee for the Community Ed Department for our school district. Yesterday at one of our meetings, a newer member mentioned that she had been doing some research to find out our district's policy on social networking sites. She learned that we do not have one. What she found was the following recommendation.
“IT Services recommends the following regarding social networks such as Facebook and MySpace:
- That the-Public School district staff refrain from using social networks such as Facebook, or MySpace to communicate, collaborate or contact students and parents.
- That staff use their district email accounts to correspond with students and parents regarding school assignments and activities.
- That staff use school owned web sites for posting assignments instead of Facebook or Myspace.
- That staff carefully consider what personal information they display in their public social network profile and what comments they make in online public forums.”
This gal seems to feel strongly that we should have a clear policy of the “don’t post nekkid pictures of yourself on the internet or you will be fired” variety regarding this issue. She is planning to draft up a proposal that will be discussed at our next meeting. If she does get that together and our committee approves it, it would have to go through legal, the superintendant’s office and probably the board of ed. before anything actually happens.
It seems like a particularly scary can of worms to me. I can see the value of reminding staff members that they do represent the schools when they are out in public and that they should be very careful about the things that might easily get back to students or their parents. I can definitely see the value of letting everyone in the world know that Facebook’s privacy features are unwieldy and glitchy and if you are not comfortable showing something to all of Grandma’s friends from church, maybe you shouldn’t put it up on Facebook.
However, I can also see how much of this can get far beyond the control of the particular employee. One of your friends can post a picture of you from a mutual friend’s batchelorette party and link it to you. You can have a falling out with someone to whom you had given access to potentially dangerous material which can be forwarded to your boss now that they hate you. All of your old Usenet Trek porn that you wrote as a college freshman has suddenly been indexed by Google. The list goes on forever.
Also - a clear policy is something the administration would have to enforce and might lead to squabbles between employees who had been friends turning into tattletale wars. As the current generation of young people get a bit older and start looking for jobs, the fact that they have already posted naked pictures of themselves everywhere (thesekidstodayitsnotlikewhenwewereyoung *eyeroll*) would make them ineligible for hire. Not a huge problem yet - but, eventually that will really limit the applicant pool to the geeky losers who don’t do that. The geeky losers, of course, will all be fired once their usenet porn is googleable.
I suspect that I am going to be expected to have opinions on this issue and, while I do have opinions on this issue - reasonably educated ones too as I have been active enough on social networking sites in my personal life to know the pitfalls - they are not ones I ever thought I would end up discussing at work.
Our next meeting is a couple of months away. I am hoping that the other gal’s fervor will die down a bit in the interim but, just in case, I want to be prepared to advocate for privacy rights in this discussion and am looking for any ideas on points I should raise. Keep in mind that the room will probably be against me. The only other person who I think *might* take my side on this is 22 and probably easily intimidated.
It’s hard to come up with anything because I don’t have anything specific to come up with an argument against yet.
I haven’t been terribly worried about my own internet presence because my direct manager’s husband is a prominent local attorney who is a huge privacy rights advocate and she tends to agree with him on these issues. She is, of course, retiring in a month.
*cries*
If anyone has any suggestions about what I should be looking for, I would love to hear them. I may bring a print out of this to the next meeting (with names redacted via Sharpie).
I may friendslock this post but, I don't want to do that just yet.