Facebook Dilemma

Parent Cafe
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I do not see any evidence in the OP’s post to support this statement. We have no idea whether the reaction would have been the equally vicious if the new replacement had been a highly disliked male. IMHO, both males and females take their fair share of abuse at the hands of those who detest them.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, in today’s society, there is a “let it all hang out there” mentality…the feeling that one has the right to express an opinion, ANY opinion, whenever and in whatever way s/he cares to. I do not share this view and have personally required my own children to demonstrate self-control and restraint in dealing with life’s aggravating situations. I also strive to set this example. Just this week, some of my kids have reaped HUGE rewards from this lesson, to my great satisfaction. </p>

<p>The do-gooder in me would wish to go to the school and inform someone in a position of authority about this site for the protection of this employee. However, the realist in me would most likely choose to handle it differently. I would make VERY sure that my children were not involved in the egregiously nasty behavior, and then I’d leave it alone. As you mention above, dad4son, few people like for their children to be “parented” by others, and if you take it upon yourself to “narc” on this dealio, your own kids could be the next victims. </p>

<p>Pages like this are unfortunately VERY common on sites like facebook. It is one of the negatives to an activity (facebook) that has many positive aspects. Although I am four square with you on the absolute impropriety of what is going on, it is also something I would be loathe to risk getting some teenagers into possibly very serious trouble over. Sometimes schools can act in very irrational manners, and I personally would not want to risk being the one responsible for that…obviously, JMO.</p>

<p>dad4son, I do admire your integrity and your level of concern over this. </p>

<p>~berurah</p>

<p>Edited to add one more point…YOU had the benefit of seeing this and making sure your kid was not involved. If you take it to the school immediately, other parents do not have this option and some VERY serious consquences could ensue without their having been given the benefit of of the knowledge you had and the opportunity to teach their own children w/o having them suffer a perhaps serious disciplinary action by the school. I’m all for giving the kids the benefit of the doubt the FIRST time.</p>

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<p>You know - I’ve watched these facebook threads for a while, and have to say, have really mixed feelings about the forum. D has an account of course, and, she cannot put anything much there because the athletic coaching staff monitors it, and they issued very strict rules about what can and cannot be on the athlete’s pages in the aftermath of the Duke matter, plus, she is well aware of the issues of potential employers, admissions people, etc. seeing it. But IMO she spends entirely too much time on the site. </p>

<p>But that’s because I’m starting to think ANY amount of time spent on facebook is too much. At first I thought it was a cool concept - what a great way for young people to stay connected to each other and maintain contact, especially as they go from high school to college and into real life - but - it seems as if the negatives of it far outweigh any usefulness. </p>

<p>Specific to this case, I’m not sure the kids are entirely the problem - I am starting to think that facebook itself is the problem. Take CC for example - if something negative or in violation of TOS is posted here, a moderator edits or kills it, and perhaps sometimes even bans the offending poster. Most cyberspace forums have similar supervision. So where are the facebook moderators? Why aren’t they addressing this? Why are they permitting young people to post derogatory information about another person? </p>

<p>It’s sort of like inviting a student to your house, and letting them drink, take drugs, have sex, etc. - and providing all the tools and space to make sure they can indulge to their heart’s content. The only difference is that in this case the “house” is in cyberspace, and the address is facebook.</p>

<p>Expressed differently, these kids would NOT write the exact same content on the blackboard in a classroom, because there are conduct and editorial rules - they’d get in heaps of trouble if they tried. So they put it on facebook, because facebook encourages it or at minimum permits it.</p>

<p>I’m sort of hoping facebook starts to lose its appeal, and/or suddenly it becomes “uncool” to participate.</p>

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<p>“I’m sort of hoping facebook starts to lose its appeal, and/or suddenly it becomes “uncool” to participate.”</p>

<p>I agree lts…and I do think fb is losing appeal among older college students. My d periodically disables hers when she thinks she is spending too much time with it. When I asked her about it once, she told me it’s pretty much a ‘freshman’ thing anyway…everyone gets bored with it eventually.</p>

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<p>Basic behavior management says that there has to be a satiation point with just about anything.</p>

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<p>lts, facebook isn’t a forum like CC. It’s not a forum at all. It’s a venue for individuals to set up their own pages and include various and assorted features and information. Not the same thing at all. There are hundreds of thousands of users so it would be impossible to have moderators the way CC utilizes moderators on the forum. There is a method to report a facebook user if a problem arises, if it violates their terms of service but it’s unrealistic to expect a moderator is going to police and enforce TOS on a site like that, or myspace, or similar groups.</p>

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<p>It’s kind of hard to form an opinion not knowing what the actual comments were. </p>

<p>They’re not threatening to kill her, are they?</p>

<p>Is it possible that these students just want to vent about losing a trusted and respected counselor and getting a new one they don’t like without it being a situation that calls for adult intervention and discipline? Isn’t it possible this topic will just blow over? They’ll tire of this subject and move on to the next fresh outrage in their lives. The ban on freak dancing or something. </p>

<p>If I saw something extremely negative about a teacher or counselor on my son’s facebook account, I think I would just tell my son to warn the other kids — since I hope he would not be the one making such comments — that anyone from the school could end up reading it including their teachers and the counselor herself. I don’t think I equate this with putting up a banner at the school. I might equate it with overhearing a conversation in which egregious things are said about a school counselor. I’d probably warn the kids to be careful what they say because it can get back to the person they’re talking about and cause more grief than they want to deal with. I wouldn’t call up the principal to report an angry or nasty conversation I’d overheard unless there was something threatening about it. </p>

<p>If the students are complaining about serious failings on the part of the counselor, it may be important to bring these issues to the attention of the principal. But if the kids writing the comments just don’t like her or think she doesn’t measure up to their previous counselor’s wonderfulness, there’s not much the principal can do about it. That students went off on her gender…well, it’s hard to react not knowing what was said.</p>

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<p>Not only is this extremely unscrupulous and deceitful, it is also against the Facebook Terms of Use.</p>

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<p>Some of the comments in this thread are EXACTLY why there was such an uproar over Facebook opening up to everyone. No matter, once parents and other (generally) unwelcome people infiltrate Facebook, students will migrate to a new site.</p>

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<p>This has nothing to do with “protection” and everything to do with snoping and eavesdropping. Very lame.</p>

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<p>Facebook lost its “exclusivity” when opened up to everyone rather than just college students with verified .edu email addresses. Then the whole News Feed fiasco happened. And now parents and employers are infiltrating the site. Facebook is on the way down. I’ll bet that in 2-3 years there will be a new popular social networking site which goes back to the roots of the original Facebook.</p>

<p>To the OP: Be careful what you wish for. Some schools have gone as far as telling all students to delete all personal websites such as MySpace or risk being suspended. <a href=“http://www.njherald.com/4126690378272.php[/url]”>http://www.njherald.com/4126690378272.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Facebook is an awesome new idea–which is just getting it’s bearings. the kids are too goofy about what they put on it–but the thing is so new and so cool–I’m not surprised there are bumps. Hey, everything about this new ‘cyber life’ is so untested, so brand new. these kids were born before the internet and now they are living in cyber space! Jeeeezzzz–who needs drugs?</p>

<p>Mine don’t spend hours on it–but they do use it to ‘text’ their friends. A kind of virtual bulletin board. Kinda cool. If they leave their screen up on my computer then I have a look but I wouldn’t open an account to keep tabs on them.</p>

<p>I’ve seen some ‘poor’ choices and I have recommended my sons delete the photos (posted by others). One ofmine has a poor myspace ‘nickname’. It’s his school nickname but it has poor connotations in other parts of the world. I haven’t addressed this yet–but I will.</p>

<p>If I were you, dad, I would fess up to your monitoring and take the heat for that. Then I would talk to your kids about your concerns–tell them the posters could get suspended. Then, let them play copper if they so choose.</p>

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<p>For those of you logging on to your child’s Facebook account, won’t they know it has been logged into? On CC here it shows when we were last on the site; does Facebook do the same? I know my child would notice if it showed him logged on at 10:00AM while he was in school. He would wonder who was using his account and might change his password. If you look at one of their friend’s pages, will that friend know your child (or you) was looking at that time? </p>

<p>I just want to make sure the parents that are peeking don’t lose their child’s trust by getting caught! Ther might be a bit of role reversal her when your child catches your hand in the cookie jar!</p>

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<p>^^This is one of the benefits of my having THREE kids on facebook…my h.s. senior and soph and my college student! My girls are both on their brother’s “friends list” and vice versa, and they would have no problem with my looking at their pages. Also, S has a friend who has given me HIS password and such, so I have my own access anyway, though under that college student’s account. Ironically, even with all this easy access, I NEVER go on there…not EVER. <em>lol</em> Trust is a wonderful thing! :)</p>

<p>~berurah</p>

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<p>I find it somewhat amusing that sfgiants is so righteous about adherence to Facebook rules. In my perusal of Facebook, it’s obvious that posters misrepresent themselves in one way or another (age, high school, etc.) in a large number of cases. </p>

<p>"In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: </p>

<ul>
<li>upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;"</li>
</ul>

<p>I also find it interesting that sfgiants seems very concerned about some parts of the terms of service, but not about the provision on which this post was based. The posts I am referring to are certainly vulgar and obscene as directed at the new GC. Vulgarity and obscenity seem to be fairly commonplace on Facebook, so my conclusion is that the administrators of the site are not the slightest bit interested in enforcing the terms of service.</p>

<p>If kids want to get down in the gutter with one another, so be it. But when that extends to authority figures (Ms. X should go ____ herself, Ms. X is a real sl_t), than I think we do kids no favor by looking the other way in the face of some misguided sense of a minor’s privacy.</p>

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<p>The following article seems to have a different opinion than the consensus I’m hearing on this thread.</p>

<p>How to monitor the kids from online social perils?
By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY</p>

<p>Schools are struggling to cope with the new reality. Aside from punishing students, they are sending letters home, changing policies to reflect the online world and bringing in speakers, including police and safety experts, to educate parents and teens about how to use sites safely. </p>

<p>“Kids are not connecting what they’re doing on the computer with real life,” says Parry Aftab, a frequent speaker at schools. She heads WiredSafety, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating parents and teens about safe practices online. “They do not believe they’re accountable.”</p>

<p>When 13-year-old Mariella Rudi of West Hollywood, Calif., made derogatory comments about a teacher on MySpace, she was just trying to fit in. </p>

<p>"I was just thinking, you know, my friends are doing it, so I should do it too,’ she says. “I thought it would be funny.”</p>

<p>Instead, a former student reported the postings to Page Private School in Hancock Park, and she was kicked out, says her mother, Mimma.</p>

<p>The school would not comment on a specific student, but did change its policy last month to state that students who post information about the school without permission can face “serious legal and disciplinary consequences with probable expulsion.”</p>

<p>Now Mariella has some advice for other kids: “You have to think about everything when you’re on that thing,” she says. “And don’t just think that your friends are just looking at it.” It’s “everyone. Everyone.”</p>

<p>Mimma Rudi grounded Mariella for posting the comments but says expulsion from school was too extreme.</p>

<p>Rudi says she wants her daughter to be safe, especially from predators. But she doesn’t want to scare her away from the Internet.</p>

<p>“It’s just unknown territory,” she says.</p>

<p>Aftab and others advise balance: Parents should start by asking their kids to show them their online profiles. </p>

<p>And they should have what author and online social expert Howard Rheingold calls “the media talk.” </p>

<p>“There’s a parental responsibility to understand what kids are doing online. Are you going to leave your kid in front of the TV? Are you going to leave your kid in front of the computer and not know what they’re doing?” he asks.</p>

<p>Rheingold and others say parents who don’t understand the technology should learn it. </p>

<p>And the best place to go to do that?</p>

<p>“When it comes to technology, you’re in a position of your children having to teach you,” Rheingold says. “How often do kids have any power or authority? How often do parents come to them and listen to them? But it takes a parent with some courage to admit they don’t know and want to learn.”</p>

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<p>It is a parent’s responsibility to guide the minor child through online’s “dos and donts” and to be aware of goings on . I don’t think it legitimately extends through college years. It would be strange for me to “monitor” the college student’s facebook activities.</p>

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<p>I agree parabella. I’ve seen both my kids facebook pages but would not dream of monitoring them. I worry about them, I still give them my opinion but they’re adults, it’s time to let them figure things out on their own. Haven’t all of our kids grown up with the privacy (or lack thereof) drilled into them about cyberspace? If they don’t get it by now, there’s not much more you can do is there? Before college is a different story.</p>

<p>As to the Op’s dillemna, I would contact the parents of the posters. Wouldn’t you want to know if your student had done that?</p>

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<p>IMO, that article seems perfectly consistent with “the consensus” here.</p>

<p>I, and apparently others here as well, would not “rat out” someone else’s disgruntled adolescent over an immature posting on Facebook when the life-changing consequence of expulsion is possible.</p>

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<p>If the consequences are “life-changing”, and you care about the posters, then it is incumbent on you to tell their parents -right?</p>

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<p>How silly of students to become incensed when their parents or school admins see their myspace/facebooks, when every perverted pedophile in the world can sit and do who knows what (well I guess we all know what) while scrolling through it. What kind of idiot posts incriminating personal pictures and data about themselves on a public forum and then complains about the wrong people looking at them? It’s like putting yourself up on an interstate billboard, for crying out loud.</p>

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<p>Rather than trying to track down and inform the parents of the kids posting, have you tried complaining to the Facebook administrators about a site that violates the terms of use? </p>

<p>At first, I thought you were talking about some comments that kids had posted in a wall-to-wall conversation. That’s the kind of thing I figured would just blow over and after a few weeks, no one is going to keep scrolling through pages of teen-talk to pick up on old insults. But if they created a site/group to keep the topic current, and have it so obviously labeled, it will easily gain the interest of anyone from that high school and that’s different. I would suggest that your first step should be complain strongly to Facebook administrators and ask them to enforce their own terms of service (as quoted in previous posts). The administrators should realize the potential damage that could be done if comments continue to escalate ---- let’s hope none of the student have read “American Psycho” and want to make a “joke” that involves that counselor :eek: — and they should remove the site. </p>

<p>Have you approached your kid about this? Maybe you can show him/her that article about kids being suspended for what they wrote and say, “better make sure you and your friends are not doing anything like this on Facebook…and if so get it deleted.” </p>

<p>The obscenity and crudity in these comments is something I dislike, but the use of this language among teens talking to each other has become ubiquitous. It’s all around now and not only in the culture — movies, radio, cable comedy etc. — but at school. Even adults, coaches specifically, are known to use profanity when talking to the teens they’re coaching so they don’t consider it as shocking as we do.</p>