Thursday, May 5, 2011

Social Cultural and Ethical Issues Surrounding Twitter

Since Twitter is a public social networking website that is open to all, there are many social, cultural and ethical issues surrounding Twitter.  The most prevalent issues among school aged students are cyberbullying, harassment and receiving sexual advances.  Cyberbullying and harassment on social networking sites can present itself in many forms including posting threatening messages, posting embarrassing photos and videos, teasing, spreading rumors, and publicizing private messages.  Cyberbullying and harassment can cause emotional distress on children and has been linked to many teenage suicides.  Pedophiles use social networking sites as a playground, searching for their next victim.  Pedophiles often disguise themselves as children in order to gain a child’s trust and lure them into harmful conversations and situations.    
Hackers use social networking sites to spread viruses and malware in order to steal personal data and information that is often times used to commit fraud and identity theft.  Oversharing is another issue with social networking sites.  Many users will post too much information about themselves including their age and birthday, address and phone number, relationship status, their place of employment and work schedule, their school, and actively use the “check-in” feature to post their whereabouts.  Posting “On my way to the airport. On vacation for 2 weeks!” is not the greatest idea.  It lets potential criminals know that if they want to rob you, now is a good time.  Many children have gotten kidnapped after posting their current location and their school or work schedule.  Posting birthdays, addresses and phone numbers is generally enough data for a criminal to steal a person’s identity. 
Proper safety precautions should be taken when using social networking sites such as Twitter.  It is best not to publicize any information that you would not want a perfect stranger to know.  Twitter updates are automatically added to a public timeline.  Twitter users should update their security settings to make their tweets (twitter updates) private so that only their followers (friends) can see them.  This can be done by following the steps below.
  1. Log into Twitter.
  2. Click “Settings” in the upper right corner of the screen.
  3. Under the “Account” tab check off “Protect my updates”.
  4. Click the “Save” button.
It is important that students are careful not to make inappropriate postings on Twitter.   Pictures and updates that students post online may seem innocent and harmless to the student and their peers; however, their pictures and postings can easily be misinterpreted by faculty members, employers, parents and law enforcement officials.   Employers are now using social networking websites to research potential employees to find out things that are not disclosed on a resume or found in a background check.  Law officials are using social networking websites to collect evidence and build cases against defendants.   College administrators are monitoring students social networking profiles and in some cases placing social networking restrictions on their students.  For example, some colleges are not allowing students who play sports to have profiles on social networking sites.  The monitoring of social networking sites has raised much controversy over the issues of freedom of speech and privacy concerns. 

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