I had a question last night from a Mrs Trellis of North Wales, she asked:
I have a query about youthworkers (and also all the volunteer helpers) being 'friends' with their young people on Facebook. I understand why it seems a good idea but I really can't bring myself to believe that it is ok practice. I need to put some rules and a policy about it into place soon (either way) but I'd really like your advice on the whole thing first. Can you help? "
My reply went something like this:
While I think that the SN thing is great, my feeling is that the 'friends' thing on FACEBOOK et al comes down to boundaries. Young people have access to all areas of the workers life/relationships (not necessarily a good thing) with the addded possibility too of the workers friends becoming friends with a young person. There are worse case scenarios with this BUT what is far more likely is that boundaries get blurred, for example youthworkers friend 'X' invites friends (including some of the young people to a party) or youthworkers friend 'Z' strikes up a romantic relationship with one of the young people.
IMHO, the issues about boundaries and how those are defined and managed. Some thought and some sort of a policy is a good idea rather than encountering problems later.
I guess the counter arguement would be 'which bit of your life and relationships do you wish to conceal from the young people and why?'
That was the question that I found myself asking about a year ago, as the boundaries on my SN accounts started to be pushed: Originally, I had set up my SN accounts as a work-thing - a tool to commnicate with the yp. Without much success, I should add. Then others started finding my networks - some older youth from previous churches, other youth workers, etc. So that was okay. Then the 30 & 40-somethings started to discover SNs (Facebook in particular) and suddenly I have a steady dribble of old school and college friends wanting to link up.
At that point, I went to a leaders' conference, where I was challenged on my need to keep different bits of my life compartmentalised - exactly the kind of dualism that we often accuse our church teenagers of. Letting the yp see other aspects of our life means that we are forced to keep those aspects under review. It means we have to be careful about what we post (or allow others to post about us). But that is not a bad thing.
Since allowing greater openness on my Facebook accounts, I've had more yp prepared to be my 'friends' than before - there's a more real person for them to be 'friends' with.
Yes, there need to be policies, but more about how we model an authentic Christian life online, than about what limits we place about ourselves.
Ray,
Thanks, that's a useful corollary to what I was exploring. I do think though there is a difference between healthy boundaries and compartmentalisation.
This is an issue i have been thinking about lately. Do you know of any existing policies and where I could get hold of them? CCPAS do a "communicating with modern technologies" booklet but it didn't say that much about social networking sites.
One important point to make about Facebook is that you also have to be careful what *other people* post about you - I think as some of the younger people are discovering as parents start to join Facebook and friend their family members! From the point of view of a youth worker I would certainly recommend going through the privacy settings and exploring the options. You can go as far as setting up a reduced profile that certain friends can see, alternatively thinking about the implications of the defaults is very worthwhile. Facebook can be quite fine grained in what it can do, the problem is that the defaults are IMHO a bit more open than would be ideal.
Depending on the privacy settings, Facebook will quite often share pictures around. For example it is possible for any of your friends to see any picture that anybody on the system has uploaded of you. Also if you comment on a picture, Facebook will tell all of your friends.
By way of an example of what effect that has, I have a friend on Facebook whose sister, who I've never met and isn't on my friend list, went on holiday. One of her friends posted and tagged a picture of her which perhaps was borderline reportable. Because of the privacy settings, our friend got told about the picture, and then commented on it, at which point Facebook distributed the picture to all of our friends friends along with her comment too.
There is actually a nice app that visualises a lot of this called TouchGraph. If you've got a Facebook account it will show you connections via public pictures on Facebook, and allow you to browse through your social network and pull back the pictures. You can access the application from http://www.touchgraph.com/TGFacebookBrowser.html well worth a look to see quite how people are connected.
"Facebook distributed the picture to all of our friends friends along with her comment too."
All of 'our' friends, or all of 'her' friends? I can quite understand that all of her friends would see the photo because of her comment, but I am not aware of Facebook distributing photos to 'friends of friends'. There has to be a direct link to a person that you know, in order for it to appear in your news feed.
It is true that if I comment on a friend's photo, then my friends (including young people) can see that photo - also possibly (depending on the settings) some not so innocent photos in the same album. Which goes back to my point about being careful what we post and what we allow to be posted about us.
I meant her friends - friends of our friend. Might be better with an apostrophe in there somewhere, or maybe diagram...
Is worth saying that the picture privacy settings only control distribution, any picture uploaded to Facebook is accessible from any account on Facebook via a direct URL.
Sorry Richard, you're right, I misread the sentence! :-)
actually, if you comment on someone else's photo then that comment and the photo can end up in your news feed, which all of your friends can see.
I have been adding my students since I joined - however what I say to them is that as they are now professionals in training IF they post something that is not good in any way, I will call them in and speak to them about it. There has to be boundaries and they need to learn about them now. If they do 'add' their young people, there needs to be a policy/ contract drawn up before adding them.
I know more than one youth worker who has added their young people but usually only once they are of a certain age, and only once both parties yw and yp understand the boundaries and issues of confidentiality!!
Not a response to anybody's comment in particular, but...
If Jesus had a Facebook account (actually a quick search reveals that he has several ...but they might not all be genuine :-) ) who would he allow to be his 'friends'? Would he have some 'top friends' (disciples and the like)? Who would he block? What policies would he draw up? What boundaries would he set?
I wonder..?
Hey
I've just spent a large chunk of the last six months exploring social networking and youth work as a research project for The National Youth Agency.
The final report of the research project is available on the project blog here: http://blogs.nya.org.uk/ywsn/
In it we've tried to show that there are different levels of engagement with SNS - and the level to which a particular youth worker should use SNS with the young people they work with depends upon their training, official role and relationship to the young people in question.
Towards the end of the final report you will find a policy checklist - that touches upon essentials such as checking the privacy settings of personal profiles - and, in most contexts, using a distinct work profile for interaction with young people.
In terms of accepting friend requests from young people - one rule of thumb might be:
-If you would have the mobile number of a young person and would text them to let them know about events etc. then it may be appropriate to accept a friend request from them to a work based SNS profile.
In terms of policies - there are a few folk over on the newly renamed Youth Work Online network: http://network.youthworkonline.org.uk who have pledged to develop their Social Networking policies in the open and to share their learning - so that might prove useful to some folks.
Its a really important topic, as SN becomes greater so do the dangers of SN grooming. If we blur the boundaries too much, how do we safeguard the young people from being 'befriended' by undesirables? We all know they exist. Its really good to read research, thank you.
Ian, this is an issue coming up in so many ways and may also be something that comes up on Saturday...facebook is a tool and a nightmare at the same time! Especially because tweens communicate with this SN distance which gives them the ability to portray themselves as they wish. I have had a few conversations with young people in my own groups (all aged 15+) who were risking themselves in some way by what they were posting or commenting - I would never have known if I hadn't been their friend on Facebook and it did make a difference when I mentioned it to them. So I agree with Dot on that - I hauled them in for a chat!
Another comment - some youth workers are naturally able to maintain healthy boundaries without any trouble - others always seems to fly close to the line. Are issues like boundaries really teachable? or is more nature than nurture?
The problem and question I ask is hypothetical but derives from real experience in a youth voluntary organization before face book even existed.The case in mind... youth workers raised their concerns and suspicions to their supervisor but there was no evidence until it was too late, to act before was thought to be discriminating against the individual.The person concerned went to prison. This is why boundaries exist and are getting stronger because too many well meaning organizations including the church have got badly burnt.Leaving it to workers to discover healthy boundaries is risky.