Part of being an effective youth worker is keeping up-to-date with the most current ways that young people communicate. In the early 00s, I used MSN to keep young people up-to-date with opening times at the youth centre I worked at. In 2005, young people had ventured into social networking sites with Myspace and some young people would add me to their band or personal profile. As this site gained popularity, discussion began to emerge in the youth sector about what young people disclosed in their profiles.
In 2010, Facebook has become the dominant social networking website with the youth demographic. Young people set up profiles that reveal information about themselves and facilitate interaction with their peers, their families and others in their circle of social relationships. Facebook also supersedes the functions of MSN chat by providing the same level of interaction, and is a more popular platform than Myspace because it is more user-friendly and has a wider range of functions.
Facebook functions primarily by allowing users to ‘add’ other people to their profiles, thereby mutually agreeing to allow each other access to their profile and other interactive functions. It is through this that I have a highly efficient and effective method of communicating with my 15 current youth council members.
By using Facebook both during and after work hours, I can easily check in with my youth councillors about tasks they need to complete, confirm times that they need to be at particular places, clarify short-notice changes or provide updates, and also be available to answer quick questions. I am also free to (and sometimes need to) let young people know if I’m not able to talk with them during after-hours periods, and they can do the same.
The three main ways that Facebook functions is through the development and updating of individual Profiles, of Pages (that are for either a group or an organisation, eg. YAPA), and for Events (that advertise an event, and its location, start and finish time, and cease activity when the event is completed). Use of Pages and Events are highly effective promotional tools if they are used well, but the most useful field of Facebook in terms of interaction is the individual Profile pages – these have the Facebook chat function.
There is debate about the ethics of workers adding young people to their personal profile page. Some workers choose to set up special “work” pages that contain limited information about themselves. This certainly makes sense, but I choose not to use this option. Since I would not log into a work-based account after hours, I’m then not able to make full use of the communicative functions of Facebook after hours.
Contrary to some views, Facebook offers an incredibly sophisticated level of control over what information is displayed and to whom. Some of the ways that I manage ‘personal disclosure’ (or what a worker reveals about their personal life to their clients) is through creating a friend group on my Facebook profile and creating specific parameters around what that group can do and see. For example, I shield some of what my friends say in their updates from my youth councillors. I also post some updates on my page that are only (or not) visible to youth councillors.
Here’s an example of why Facebook is so effective: In the evening after attending YAPA's recent SHIFT THIS youth event with some youth councillors, in a period of 10 minutes:
- I checked that one young women had gotten home safely
- I gave a few encouraging words to another youth councillor who had performed in the hip-hop workshop
- I confirmed the rendezvous time with another young person for tomorrow morning’s journey back into the city
- I connected an ex-youth councillor who now lives in another LGA with the YDO of her area!
- I also answered a detailed question from a youth councillor about a park and asked that they provide me with further information to my work email so I could follow it up the next week.
There is simply no way I could have done all this, with such ease and efficiency with any other mode of communication!
Advantages of communicating with my youth council via Facebook
More reliable means of communication as young people check Facebook more regularly than they do email.
Young people are comfortable and confident with communicating through Facebook.
Facebook allows for photos/videos to be shared with numerous people at the same time and for these people to comment on photos/videos. Notifications are also sent to alert users that someone has posted a comment after them. Users are also free to de-tag themselves in photos if they do not wish to be identified.
The layout of Facebook makes it easier to read a series of comments on a wall post/status/video/photo and so it is easier to include a group of people in one conversation.
Privacy settings:
- Photo albums/ videos - can be customised so that only selected people (or groups) can view photos
- Photos/ videos user is tagged in by other people - can be adjusted so that only certain people can see these photos.
- Wall posts – can be customised so that only selected people can post on a user's wall and see posts by other people, posting can also be entirely disallowed.
- Status (the information that is shared by the user, which appears on their wall and the News Feed (News Feed; Facebook home page which can include status updates, photos, videos and comments on other people's walls/photos/videos etc)) – can be customised so that only selected people can see it and comment on it.
- Personal information – can be customised so that only selected people can see it.
- Friend list – (a list of people who the user is connected with on Facebook and can interact and share information with) – can be customised so that only selected people can see who the user is friends with.
- Interests and other pages – can be customised so that only selected people can see the user’s interests, events attending and so on.
- Information accessed by Facebook applications through user and user’s friends’ profiles - can be customised so that only certain information or no information at all can be accessed and shared.
- Public search – if this is switched off no one can find and view user’s profile.
- Block lists – other users, applications, application invitations and event invitations can be blocked meaning that they can no longer contact the user.
- All communication with youth council can be privatised by communicating through Personal Messages
- Email settings – receive notifications from youth council Facebook group to work email, so that notifications from other friends and youth council are kept separate.
Promotion of youth events - When an Event is created on Facebook, it can be made open for the public to attend or only to specific people.
- The advantage of the event being open for all Facebook users to see is that it can serve as a marketing tool of youth events to all young people.
- The Event can also be privatised so that those people who aren’t invited are not able to view the details of the event.
- The advantage of the Events feature is that Facebook sends the invitees reminders of the event, so it can serve as a more interactive invitation (than through email or phone) as the invitees can post comments on the event.
Disadvantages of communicating with youth council via Facebook
Documents cannot be attached on Facebook as they can be in emails.
More convenient to type large amounts of information in email due to the layout and formatting options.
Young people may not be fully aware of privacy settings and may inadvertently reveal private or inappropriate information.
Youth worker would have the responsibility to monitor what is being posted as public information by the youth council, particularly because of Council’s typical approach to the publishing information in the media.
If a user comments on a friend’s status/wall/photo/video, this may be seen by anyone unless that friend adjusts their privacy settings as listed above. This problem can be overcome by sending Personal Messages which can only be seen by the person they are sent to, like an email.
Communication through Facebook is not as well documented or recorded as it is via methods such as email.
The Slippery Slope Of Facebook!!!
ReplyDeleteWhy Youth workers or any staff who work with children or young people should not have the children or young people they work with as friends on facebook:
• The relationship with the young people is between the organisation via their representative (youth worker) -They come to the Wollongong City Council's youth centre not Tracey Kirk-Downey's youth centre. To be otherwise sets up a difficult situation when that worker moves on or is on extended leave.
• Not all youth workers are ethical or professional in their work with young people. it is difficult to monitor what is being said to a young person if they are on a person's facebook as opposed to the centre's facebook. For young people who are experiencing emotional or other issues that lead them to be particularly vulnerable - then this avenue of communication can be fraught with problems. As "friends" are invited to join a person's facebook page it implies to the young person they are a friend. Those more vulnerable young people can see this relationship differently than you intend it to be and things you share on the page or say can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the emotional state the young person is at the time of reading it.
• It is also very easy for a parent to misinterpret what is being said on the site and can cause huge issues with the young person in question and the worker involved.
• Young people can be groomed over these social networking sites and you can't guarantee ever that at any time that we don't have a pedophile on our staff or a staff member who takes an opportunity to behave in an inappropriate way through this avenue. MOST pedophiles do not have a record and can at any time end up as a staff member - they are clever at avoiding detection etc etc etc.
• What happens when the relationship on facebook becomes awkward and the young person is wanting more from this relationship than you intended. Vulnerable young people can and do attach themselves to workers and this gives them another avenue to take the relationship to another level. Young people can easily develop "crushes" on workers and explore this through facebook with more personal contact. Being "defriended" on facebook could be traumatising for the young person and create a situation where untrue accusations are made against the worker as a result.
• Young people have friends - they and their parents need to TRUST that you will be a professional at all times. It is hard to set limits and boundaries when you are sharing personal information with the young people at your service on facebook. It blurs the lines of what their relationship is with you.
• This has huge ramifications about child protection issues and protecting staff from vexatious complaints from young people who are upset with what was or wasn't said to them on facebook.
• People use social networking pages to groom young people and children for sex and porn daily - the police have whole units of people who sit on these pages all day and night pretending to be a young child or young person catching pedophiles trying to develop a relationship of trust to get these kids to meet up with them. This is not a place for us to be - WE ARE NOT THEIR "FRIENDS", WE ARE STAFF WHO WORK WITH THEM.
When I stepped into my role of Youth Events and Projects Officer at Sutherland Shire Council in November of 2010, one of the first projects I worked on was getting a facebook page up an running. Social networking sites are a really great way to get the word out and are extremely cost efficient also.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a facebook page dedicated to the events crew here, so that they could communicate with each other, with me, and find information about upcoming meetings. Often my team did not check emails or texts, facebook was the best form of communication that I had with them.
Many of the events crew members began to add my personal profile, and I accepted as I saw no harm. The problem was progressive, and it is only recently that I have decided to delete the crew members from my friends list. This is for three reasons:
1. Crew members began talking to me about issues surrounding the crew late at night in my social time. This was not harming me, however it was not the correct medium or time to contact me as I was not working, I did not have access to my work files to answer their questions and the continuous lists of questions began to frustrate me a little as I started to sound like a broken down record: "Send me an Email, and I will answer your questions during office hours when I have access to my files."
2. Crew members began to associate me as Petrhyce Leather the friend from facebook rather than Petrhyce Leather the Youth Events and Projects Officer from Sutherland Shire Council. This is where I felt it became a little dangerous. Meetings became much more relaxed as the team felt they knew me better, however I was not comfortable with the access level they had to my personal information.
3. Event attendee's and band members began to add me on facebook to talk to me about event's, procedures, and other work related stuff.
The main reason that I see facebook as a problem is that it is not an accountable source. I think it promotes a personal image rather than the corporate image that so many of us strive for in Councils. Furthermore, the concept of my events crew and event patrons having access to personal photo's, information, conversations, friends lists, etc makes me a little uncomfortable.
I do however see how important it is for youth to put a face to a name and connect a role with an actual person. Since I no longer want to use my personal facebook page to 'put a face to my name' for people, I am considering publishing a profile of myself - photo and bio included - with all the appropriate contact information, and my office hours.
Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteMy ideas below are still a work in progress, and I would love your thoughts.
I should start out saying that I don't have any ethical problem with the 'use' of Facebook in contacting/communicating with young people. I think (as Mark states) that it serves a great promotional purpose in engaging young people and encouraging participation (e.g. getting an event viral means ALOT of young people are involved in 'owning' the event). However, it seems that there does seem to be some concern about the privacy and personal boundaries of youth work practice in an online space.
I think that the 'Facebook' problem also effectively highlights the challenge of identifying where Council YDO's (I will call all Council staff YDO’s for the purpose of this post) 'sit' in the youth sector - are they 'Youth Workers' or not????
For 'youth workers' (i.e. have a position that is based on a transformational 'relationship' with young people), I ethically see Facebook as only a marginal problem. The online version of the relationship should mirror the ethical/trusting space of the physical relationship. In my opinion, it should be managed to ensure that there is a commitment to confidentiality between the youth worker and the young person in any 'work' that occurs, and that it supports the principles of good youth work practice (e.g. not showing favouritism to one young person over another, ‘guiding’ and ‘questioning’ rather than giving advice). In response to a couple of Tracey's points- if a youth worker can't be relied on to maintain an ethical, transparent and trusting relationship in an online environment, can they be trusted in a one-on-one setting? Would you allow someone who seemed to be sexualising young people/clients on Facebook to work with them in a centre?
However, the question of YDO's and Facebook is interesting. My experience with Councils is that they don't expect their YDO's to be 'youth workers'. They expect them to run events, conduct community development projects, coordinate networks, but NOT undertake 'transformational relationships' with young people. As such, the 'relationship' between YDO and young person is not an organisational imperative, and so Facebook becomes less about the personal relationship between a youth worker and client, and more about promotion and communication between an organisational representative (who is hypothetically interchangeable) and a group of young people.
If this line of reasoning (i.e. distinction between YDO's and 'youth workers') is followed, we see a model that is in line with local government thinking around the position of YDO's (i.e. organisational engagement), and the adherence of youth workers to youth work ethical conduct (personal engagement).
I think that Petrhyse’s example perfectly highlights this conflict – the ‘comfortable’ and personal level of engagement that a youth worker would seek with a young person was uncomfortable for a local government worker. I also think that she found a solution that nicely balanced her personal boundaries, the ethical responsibilities of her job role and the needs of the young people she is engaging.
Possibly some of the ethical confusion around Facebook comes from the role conflict that we experience in the sector. This is partly complicated by YDO's knowing that they need to personally engage young people to be successful (as Mark does very well), and also a lot of unethical one-on-one youth work practice that translates into bad online practice (which is more noticeable).
I would love to hear your thoughts on how this affects online practice. Do you have an organisational page that works? What makes it work?
Do you have a page that you use as a youth worker to do ‘youth work’?
I’m thinking that if the above is correct (i.e. we know what the purpose of our engagement is), then it is possible to develop some meaningful online standards for the sector.
Cheers,
Dean
I have a whole stack of issues with workers being "friends" with young people on social media sites but equally as pressing an issue is the question of why would/are workers seeking to do "work" with young people outside designated work hours? I believe there should be no reason to be conducting business outside of work hours and I would also assume that most Council's (and NGO's for that matter) would have policies in place regarding electronic communication which cannot be met when work is being conducted off site.
ReplyDeleteI think the simple answer to "why would workers engage young people outside of work hours" is because work hours often don't suit young people! In my careers as a youth worker I have called young people in the evening, run programs on evenings and weekends, run events on evenings and weekends, corresponded with young people in the evneing through a variety of means at their request, and responded to crisis situations after hours. In fact, most of the effective youth programs I've coem across tend to operate for at least some of the time outside of normal business hours.
ReplyDeleteI have this dilemma a little easier in that the young people I come across through work are mainly the young adult volunteers and not 'clients'.
ReplyDeleteEven still, I have a 'work' profile and feel this is very useful. It means that I am able to communicate with large numbers of volunteers easily and without them hsving accedd drunken photos of me from years ago that still exist on the wonderful web.
I did have a 'client' attempt to add me on my personal profile and I was able to direct them to the work one. They then became old emough to volunteer themselves and since they still had a connection with the organisation were able to get started while the interest in helping was still high.
The major problem with use of Facebook with clients is that Facebook has no public/private separation. This public/private distinction is one of the things that youth workers use to maintain professional boundaries. It separates work time from private time.
ReplyDeleteFor some youth workers, working with young people who are not particularly vulnerable (leadership groups, youth councillors), the use of Facebook as Mark and Jelena suggest may be mostly unproblematic - and the use of privacy settings solves some of the problems. Though it is true that the complicated use of privacy settings can be difficult for those workers who are not tech savvy - and if you can't have one policy for all amongst your workforce this is a real problem.
I work with homeless young people, a group facing multiple barriers and who are extremely vulnerable. For these young people, confidentiality and privacy becomes vital in the one to one work that youth workers do to assist them. They are likely to push boundaries and are often keen to develop 'private' relationships and friendships with workers. For this work, strictly maintaining the public/private split is essential to protect both the worker and the young person. This is why a worker 'friending' a young person with their private facebook profile would be rightly be a reason for some serious performance management in my workplace.
And yet i am absolutely in favour of the use of Facebook with clients - using a 'work' profile that is approved by your organisation or a public organisation page.
Tracey is right, young people come to youth workers through organisations, she is wrong to think facebook is more than a communication tool. If you trust youth workers to use their professional judgement to make phone calls to young people (which can not be verified), or email them using a work email, then why not allow them to use the same judgement on facebook (which produces a written evidence record for accountability). At the same rate. Mark and Jelena, if we wouldn't give a young person our private phone number, then why is a private facebook page ok?
Your professional judgement controls what you put on your professional youth work page. The one thing that is not in your control, however, is young people's posting on facebook. Ensuring young people are able to make informed choices about their communication and privacy in online environments becomes the role of the youth worker, as is some reasonable moderating of posts, especially where you have created the space for that communication.
Facebook all the way - but decent policy is needed and care for the nuances of confidentiality and boundaries.
Our relationship with the young people we work with is, or at least should be, strictly professional We wouldn't invite clients to our home, or take them for a drive in our car, or give them our home phone number, so why add them as friends in our facebook page.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think facebook's a great way to keep in touch, and for a youth worker, I think it could be useful to communicate with young people in their way.
I see no reason why one couldn't discuss with managers about setting up a profile for their youth centre on facebook. The young clients can then add the youth centre to their friends list, rather than a youth worker. I think this approach could be a possible ethical solution, as youth workers could avoid all the potential issues that could arise from adding clients to the friends on there personal facebook profile, but would still allow youth workers at the centre to post info relevant to the centre such as up coming events etc. And also, any worker at centre could add this info, so one doesn't have to do everything.
I do think, however, that if a youth centre did set up a facebook page, then it would probably be a good idea to also have a detailed policy written up about this, mainly to clarify things like can staff log into this after hours, or when away from centre, what will or won't be posted onto centres facebook page etc.
I certainly agree that there is a difference in using Facebook to engage different 'types' of clients. I take the point that my use of FB to engage with youth councillors is quite different to the same thing with at-risk groups of young people such as homeless young people.
ReplyDeleteWith these differences though come different priotities and different things that FB can help you achieve as a worker. Connecting with a Homeless young person via FB could provide an opportunity to identify issues in that young person's life, communicate with them at a time that best suits them (possibly after hours) or perhaps even offer counselling via the chat function. And at the end of the day, no matter what kind of profile you set up, it's always going to be another human being at the other end - and because of that, I don't think it really matters whether that profile is a personal or professioanl one... as long as its OPERATION is conducted professionally.
For my youth council work, being able to quickly check in on actions or tasks that a number of young people need to follow up on at the time they are in-front of their PCs (after school/Uni) is invaluable. I have also been able to direct and then monitor young people to distribute surveys to their peer groups all using FB.
I do still agree that in the end, it's probbaly a better idea to disctinctly separate personal and professional profiles for interaction with young people on FB. But as we all know in Youth Work, there is rarely a one size fits all approach that can be identified. Different things work in different contexts and my experience is that good youth work is built on this understanding and inovation.
As a youth worker i find Facebook an effective means of communicating with young people. This is how they communicate. However i dont think that i should use my personal account with the young people. I have an account that is the name of the youth centre and use it instead of using my personal account. I feel that using my personal account would destroy the professional relationship i have with young people i work with. Sometimes they manage to find my personal account (which is set to private) at which i direct them to the youth centre's facebook and explain that i cannot add them as a friend due to the working relationship i have with them.
ReplyDeleteAt the centre I work we have set up a FB page and works amazingly well for promotion and communication. None of the staff is allow to be friends with our service profile or any of our clients.
ReplyDeleteMy dilemma is different though. I became friends with one of the staff and I saw he's been uploading pictures from work with clients and under 16s on them. I told him that I thought that was unethical as he never asked for consent (and he knows that consent for media release at our service is always needed if we want to publish any picture of clients). He just responded that only family and friends would see those pictures, and did nothing about.
I feel very uncomfortable with this situation but I don't want to make a big issue, I don't want to report to our supervisor...
Any advice? anybody know about any site where I can find some info about it, that I can forward to him?
Thanks
I think - as many of us who have been Youth Workers for some years - the reality is that even though we are new at this digital age thing, the young people we are working with are digital natives. They were born with it. As to whether this is a good way to communicate with young people - that horse has bolted, its a done deal. This is the world we live in. All of those things like being accountable for what we say and how we behave are still applicable on facebook. Yes, we need to speak professionally on facebook - how is that different to face to face, on the phone, email or - god forbid - by sending a letter in the post.
ReplyDeleteI have a work profile and part of my name is my org name. My password is known to my team leader (accountability). Before I had this lots of the young people I met through work searched for me and tried to add me on my personal profile. Now if that happens I just add them on my work profile. To be honest it has become invlaluable in the last twelve months. I have been able to contact clients who have "dropped off the map" numerous times, maintained relationships with clients who have disconnected from support and this has helped them to re-engage down the track. I don't log on if I am not working unless its for something specific, and as I also have my own personal profile, I have still been able to enjoy facebook (and my relationships with my actual friends) in my personal time and keep my personal life as just that - personal.
Social networking is an important tool and it is the way of the world these days! Like with all other aspects of our lives, there's no reason while the professional has to blur with the personal - its about accepting our clients AS THEY ARE and valuing what is important to them and how they want things to be.
Facebook is an effective and brilliant way of capturing the attention of young people whether it be by advertising and inviting them to events or having a specific page for Youth topics to be discussed.
ReplyDeleteI personally wouldn't add clients to my personal page as i feel thats allowing too much of yourself to be seen. I however would have a "work" account for clients to be able to contact me when it suited them as for a young person their time table is often after "work" hours.
I think having a Facebook page available for young people to contact or be involved with takes down some of the barriers they often hold up towards youth workers or other workers within the Community Services sector. Keeping up with the way young people communicate is a very important aspect.
"Facebook is an effective and brilliant way of capturing the attention of young people whether it be by advertising and inviting them to events or having a specific page for Youth topics to be discussed."
ReplyDeleteI full agree that face book as a networking tool is very effective however, Individual workers worker's need to maintain a safe work relationship with the client. Facebook would allow access to allot of private and personal information that would not be maintaining a safe level of appropriate disclosure.
A Fb page for a company however would be considerably more appropriate.
One thing with FB is that is a social networking sight and unless monitored closely harmful and malicious remarks and views can be posted on public viewed walls that could effect the company in a less than desired way.
One question I have been asking myself is if social networking is the modern day 'Youth Worker?'
ReplyDeleteYouth workers are said to work with young people to build strong positive relationships to enable the young person to show engagement, empower young people to further their development, to informally teach young people life skills and infomation they may need, to teach young people how to stay safe, to give young people a chance to have their own opinion and a chance to express their own feelings to both peers, parents, government, worldwide public etc, and to give a young person a voice. These are arguably the Youth Workers job are they not?
Well does Social Networking have the same impact for young people?
Engaging young people - with the ever expanding social network structure this is a main strength of social networking as it engages an enormous amount of young people.
Empowering young people - Social networking has given young people the chance to build a career. Take 'Justin Bieber' - Love him or hate him he built a career of a video posted on one of the frontrunners of a social networking service YouTube and even to the modern day SB.TV which was built on advertisement and videos on various forms of social networking services including FaceBook and YouTube and is run by Young People.
Building Positive Relationships - Peers, Family, Colleagues - You name it they are on some kind of social network service. This enables young people to create a strong positive relationship with other peers and to connect with parents etc.
Give a Chance to Express Feeling - Through status's, Pictures, Messages social networking gives young people the chance to express feeling. Granted this could be very public and there are huge implications to this but the young person may feel more comfortable this way?
Giving young people a powerful voice - One way I feel young people are not interactive enough with their community, country etc is by having a voice. Social Networks give them this worldwide.