Students (and Teachers...and Parents) on Facebook

Here's a neat article on "What Not to Post on Facebook." It might seem that these "adult" issues (identity theft, home robbery) do not affect students, but they do. When it comes to online safety, we generally advise students to stay away from inappropriate comments and photos and the like.

But what of the teenager, with 1000+ friends on Facebook, who posts that he and his family are going on vacation out-of-state for a week? There are now 1000+ people who know exactly where this teen's house is, and that it will be empty for a week. If the teen posts a lot of pictures, potential thieves are probably aware of what this house has to offer.

There are a lot of bad things that can potentially happen. Of course, this does not mean that we should coerce everyone to delete their social networking accounts. But we should open a dialogue with kids (and parents...and teachers) which logically and rationally looks at what we are putting online, and what the repercussions might be.