Ethical (and Legal) Social Networking

Social Networking has been a problematic issue for education. Ethical issues involving friendships between students and teachers has been the subject of many technology policies and, most recently, a law in Missouri.

Facebook has become a ubiquitous part of most middle and high school student's lives. A gray area comes into play for educators in being friends with their current or former students on Facebook. Many schools have technology policies that spell out what kind of online contact students and teachers are permitted to have. Missouri has taken this one step further recently by making it illegal for teachers and students to have any contact on any site that allows for private communication - not just Facebook. This bill was created in order to protect students from inappropriate contact between teachers and students.

The law prohibits teachers and students from being friends on Facebook but still allows teachers to create a Facebook page that would allow students to become fans of them. So, in essence, Facebook contact is not entirely prohibited but contact that would allow private messages to take place is not permitted.




Recently this law has been challenged because it also prevents teachers who are parents from being friends with their own child if they happen to meet the definition of a student in the state of Missouri. A Missouri teacher has filed a lawsuit that claims that this law violates her 1st and 14th amendment rights. There is legal precedent to back up this teacher and it will be interesting to see how the courts respond to this lawsuit.

Facebook has also published a .pdf called Facebook for Educators which was created with the help of professional educators as a guide for teachers regarding Facebook and education. This guide recommends that educators can use Facebook to:

1. Help develop and follow your school’s policy about Facebook.

2. Encourage students to follow Facebook’s guidelines.

3. Stay up to date about safety and privacy settings on Facebook.

4. Promote good citizenship in the digital world.

5. Use Facebook’s pages and groups features to communicate with students and parents.

6. Embrace the digital, social, mobile, and “always-on” learning styles of 21st Century students.

7. Use Facebook as a professional development resource.


These guidelines and the recommendations accompanying them are important for educators to familiarize themselves with so that they can be informed and able to speak intelligently about social networking and the inherent problems therein.

Google+ has emerged as another social networking site and the way that it is set up may mitigate some of the problems that are associated with educators and Facebook. Google+ does have a chat feature like Facebook does, however, because it allows users to place contacts into circles it allows for a mechanism to ensure appropriate contact. Students could be placed into a certain circle so that only certain information is shared with them. This feature does not entirely eliminate the possibility of inappropriate contact because it would depend largely on the teacher to use the site appropriately but it is a device that could create limited information and sharing with students.

Ultimately teachers must use social networking sites carefully to protect their students and themselves from compromising situations. Most teachers do not desire to have inappropriate contact with their students but it is important to be careful that being friends with a student or former student does not create overfamiliarity and denigrates professional distance. Teachers should be concerned with their students and available for them, but that does not necessarily need to extend to social networking sites.