Social Media Education

I had not heard about this story before reading the article "Friend Game: Behind the Online Hoax That Led To A Girl's Suicide," so reading through the details was striking and disturbing. There were a few significant quotes that represented the most important themes in this piece. Here were a few that I had to read twice:

"Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace."
"Unlike Facebook, MySpace does not require its users to identify themselves with a first and a last name, so there is little illusion, even, that a profile possesses any direct correspondence to a flesh-and-blood individual."
"The conventions of romantic comedy, though, have required that the parties who detest each other in their workaday existences come to know each other’s charms in the parallel universe of the computer. The other way around—proxy war perpetrated online by people who, like the Drews, feign affection face to face—and it’s a horror movie."

There were other noteworthy quotes, but those are just a few that stuck out to me. I had a MySpace account for a little while before Facebook existed, but I never felt like I was in danger of something like this happening to me. The article points out a few flaws with MySpace, like the "chaotic" organization, the idea that no last name is necessary, and the fact that there was no enforcement of the over-14 age policy. However, I also believe that interactive social media has become so mainstream and easy to use that there schools must consider instituting something to the effect of "social media education." In school (especially in middle school), I took health classes that taught topics that ranged from puberty to bullying to time management. With the advent of social media and the ease with which young kids can join these sites, social media education must be incorporated into this curriculum. Bullying and responding to bullying is only part of social media education. There are other bad things that can happen because of "reinvention of identity" on social media sites.

In some cases, being able to create an alternate personality or identity online is a good thing. Some people can express themselves better or become a part of a community online that doesn't exist in their physical life. However, it is still the obligation of schools and parents to make sure that children utilize these sites for their positive attributes and are aware that bad things can happen. Further, they should also be equipped to handle these situations and know which resources are available to them.