SNS: Schools encouraging parents to discourage children’s use

One of the social networking missions I have recently embarked on is to develop a widget/application for Facebook that will enable my local authority to consult with children and young people and most importantly keep them up to date with the council’s responses to the consultation/poll results. This is building on the fact that we have acknowledged that this has been one our weaknesses and it would be a complex task to audit our youth involvement/consultation. This widget will hopefully enable us to work within the ‘You said, we did’ ethos and to publish our responses using YouTube videos, photos, pdfs, articles etc.

Promotion

In order to promote the widget/app I have been trying to arrange a visit to a High School within each of our 5 areas. However this has proved difficult, with no Schools being particularly forthcoming in their response to my request to present an assembly. In fact the only response I have received so far is from a concerned learning mentor who has advised me that their School has encouraged parents to discourage their child’s use of social networking sites. See below:

“Thank you for the e-mail below which has been forwarded to me by our office staff. I am the Learning Mentor here and work closely with our School Council.  I would be interested to find out more about your proposals before going ahead, in particular I am concerned that we have had a number of cases of quite serious cyber bullying through social networking sites and so as a school we are concerned about encouraging pupils to use sites such as BEBO.  If we told our pupils to fill out your questionnaire inevitably many will then stay on the site for other purposes and I think it would be wrong of us to ask pupils to use these sites when we have previously asked parents to try to prevent their use.  I appreciate you are trying to spread a message of safe usage of these sites however I’m concerned that the school could be accused of sending mixed messages, is there any way that our pupils could take part in the consultation without using social networking sites?”

So before I tell you my thoughts on this dilemma and what I believe my response will be, I am opening it up for those interested to voice their opinions. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Is the School right to discourage young people from using the services because people have been bullied? If so should we be discouraging students from going to school too because they also get bullied there?

Example: Youth engagement via social networking

Hi all sorry I haven’t updated for ages! I have been really busy shaping Norfolk’s social networking practice, so lots to backdate on my Blog!!! I am currently in Liverpool staying with some old youth work buddies but will be leaving on thursday to travel to Wigan for the National Conference of the Federation of Detached Youth Work. I’m buddying up with Tim Davies to run a workshop regarding social networking. The following powerpoint presentation is a snippet of what will hopefully be a very interactive session. The presentation provides a quick example of what to do and what not do when using social networking sites for youth engagement work. The idea is that in the first example you gain an understanding of how an interaction with ‘new’ contacts (young people) can take place on social networking sites such as Facebook and then you get a chance to feedback any concerns regarding the example and ask any questions. There’s lots to spot in the example and there are some key parts of the interaction that define the outcome i.e. providing the option for voluntary engagement, identifying how a young person can verify your identity, being clear about your role etc. 

The responses used from young people are all real but the names and photos have been changed to protect their identity.

Detached youth work… a new phenomenon?

Following my decision to go at it alone and create yet another personalised Blog I was faced with the complex task of deciding a name for what I hope will become a great resource for all. As I sat attempting to contemplate a fitting name for a blog, which I anticipate will predominately explore the topic of ‘virtual youth work’, I remembered an analogy I used during my presentation at the LGiU seminar. I related the process of engaging unknown young people through social networking sites to the delivery of ‘detached’ or in this case ‘virtual detached youth work’. As we begin to openly explore the opportunities for engagement using these sites many youth workers and young people themselves have expressed concerns. Common within these concerns is the belief that this method of engagement is ‘new’ when in fact I believe it has been in use within youth work practice for many years.

A great example of this occurred during the seminar when two young people from Lewisham were asked to share their views on the use of social networking sites within youth work. Surprisingly they were not very positive about the idea and in fact discouraged the seminar’s participants from using sites such as Facebook to engage young people citing that it was an invasion of their ‘private space’. In one way I do agree with the young people. Engaging young people through these sites will require a youth worker to ‘invade’ the young people’s ‘private spaces’, however this is no different to the methods used for many years within detached or street based youth work. Out on the streets youth workers will often invite themselves into young people’s ‘private spaces’ such as in the park that the young people hang out in or near the wall that they sit on. They will then proceed to attempt to engage the young people and build relationships. Often they will be told to go away or occasionally they will strike up conversations and begin to build relationships leading to future positive engagement. Key to this method of engagement is that young people have the choice to agree or to decline the invitation of engagement.

As Jeffs explains when discussing ‘voluntary participation’ and engagement it requires ‘young people’ to have the choice ‘to become involved in settings and activities. Furthermore, within youth work settings they have freedom over the depth of their involvement.’ (1996)

Therefore as long as youth workers maintain the ‘voluntary’ aspect when engaging young people through social networking sites, young people can choose to decline friend requests and invitations to express their ‘views and opinions’.

So to promote this analogy and encourage further discussion on the topic I name this blog ‘virtually detached’…

References

Jeffs, T. (1996) ‘The hallmarks of youth work’, YMCA George Williams College Induction Studies Unit 7.

Back to Blogging…

Back to blogging?

Yes that’s right I’m back to blogging! Having begun my blogging adventure in Germany, reflecting on my six week placement at the Jugendhaus in Moormerland (Germany’s equivalent to Norfolk) I have made the dreaded decision to burden myself with the immense pressure and responsibility of keeping a blog up-to-date again!

“Why now?” you might ask, well I have just returned from London having spent two days exploring the use of social networking within youth work. What I discovered during my time spent at the Social Networking and Youth Participation seminar and Tim Davies’ UK Youth Online event is that I am practically the only one who is not blogging! So I have been persuaded to catch up and start sharing my practice and have therefore set up a new Blog to help me see what all the fuss is about!

So stay with me as I attempt to perfect my Blogging ability, whilst providing an insight into my current practice…