Privacy and College: What to Do When Classes Require Social Media
May 1, 2010 | VReitano
What you do online can be viewed by everyone, but you knew that already right? Recently, I came across this article: Why Students Should Not Be Required to Publicly Participate Online. And it spurred my own thoughts on the subject of students participating publicly in social media. Should we have to use Facebook, Twitter and other online profiles for class projects?
I’m a communications student and we are taught in college to communicate with people. I share my daily updates on Twitter, Facebook and Ping.fm with everyone, but what about those students who wish to remain anonymous?
Some of my friends in public relations have had to create Twitter profiles for their senior capstone classes and have had a hard time separating their personal tweets from their class tweets. One of my friends, who happens to be Twitter savvy didn’t mind, and yet those students who didn’t even use the service were a little upset. They felt that they shouldn’t be required to use a service for class if they didn’t use it personally.
I think having professors require students to share some part of their online identity with the world is important because it trains you to understand what should be put in the public domain and what shouldn’t. For example, my freshman year of school, a group of students got kicked out of their dorms the week before finals for posting a picture of the 5 “30s” (beer boxes) that they had shoved in an empty closet in their dorm. Needless to say, campus security knew exactly which closet to open when searching their room.
Of course, professors could say “create a separate login” for such and such assignment, not necessarily require students to use their “private” accounts. If you chose to keep your identity private for a personal reason, then you may have to work something out with your professor, however, I don’t really think that should be your concern. Students, on my campus anyway, live their lives online, and so if they are willing to have a Facebook in the first place, what difference does it make who can see it? It’s all public knowledge once it hits the Web.
As for those students who have a social media presence they don’t want to intersect with their “professional” image, you will likely need to create separate profiles. This is especially helpful when you get into the job search – check out my post on how to use social networks to get hired for more information. Of course, if you have any questions feel free to email me or comment below. I’d love to hear other students’ take on this–I communicate for a living, but business students and others don’t, so what do you think about it?
