I am in favour of schools playing a far more proactive role in dealing with cyberbullying and advocating privacy settings to protect against cyber stalkers, but spying on their students’ Facebook pages is not appropriate.
SCHOOLS are using internet monitoring companies to read what students are saying on social networking sites.
The typical service used by schools such as Ascham looks at any publicly available material posted on sites such as Facebook, Formspring and Tumblr to monitor the sometimes ferocious use of the media by young people.
Whilst schools often go into their shells when it comes to cyberbullying, spying on their students is an invasion of privacy. Instead of concerning themselves with publicly available material they should work harder to ensure their students have their privacy settings on.
This measure will do precious little to stop bullying. Bullies are much smarter than we give them credit for. They find ways to harass away from the watchful eyes of anyone that might punish them for their crimes.
Yet whilst this will do little to prevent bullying it will make the students even more negative about school and authority in general.
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