Your agency has set up a MySpace page and have found it to be really useful in connecting with young people on their own terms. One of your clients invites you to be her MySpace friend. You are not sure whether to accept, so you have a look at her MySpace page. Her photo slideshow presents what looks like a lot of teenage binge drinking.
While you are there you stumble across the profile of another young woman from your agency. You have a look at her MySpace profile and notice that she says she is 18 years old – in fact she is 13, and in the comments there are a few older men asking for her contact details.
What would you do?
Mmm this is a hard one, my service uses My Space as a way of connecting with young people and we constantly recieve requests to become friends. Its really difficult to see the sort of thing that is talked about in the dilemma and not feel concerned about it but there is also the issue of trust because basically you have been invited into a young persons personal diary.
ReplyDeletePersonally I have a lot of concern with My Space because of the kind of information young people tend to share about themselves but I also realise that it is a valuable form of self expression and communication with the generation of young people that we work with. So the way I see it is like this the drinking is being done in their own personal space and not at the youth centre this is beyond my control and the 13 year old is doing the same kind of thing so where is my duty of care here?Mmm tricky .
Naturally I am concerned about what I have seen but as it is a situation that is not in the space that I control I am limited in my approach.
So as I have done several times before, I would approach the dilemma through group discussion, in a situation where we can talk openly and indirectly, talking about the potential danger in sharing misleading and very personal information through sources like My Space, talk about drinking, why they are doing it,how can you drink and be safe.Talk about the kind of consequences that might occur from these situations.
I think arming young people with knowledge through relaxed conversation is sometimes the best way to deal with this kind of dilemma, allowing them to think about it without it being a lecture or forced process this allows them to take something away from the session that might better inform their future choices.
Here's a news flash. Our clients are binge drinking, especially at event parties like birthdays and graduations. Often photos of these events make their way onto websites and phones.
ReplyDeleteI have concerns about trolling My Space pages to learn anything about clients. They surely have the right to withhold information about their behaviour, just as so many youth workers do from their clients.
There are plenty of images out there of workers out late with grinding jaws, eyes like dinnerplates, cigarettes and drinks in hand.
My advice is for workers to let My Space belong to the kids, or to avoid contact between client and workers pages.
Once observed, the behaviours don't seem all that different from what went on when I was an adolescent, except for the public nature of the images.
The only thing to do is to get to know the clients well enough to name and discuss the related issues. It might leave the young person a bit disengaged though to know that you got this information by e-spying on them.
I think that it's not an appropriate answer to simply say 'our clients are binge drinkers, so be it' or to simply create a boundary between the service and client's my space pages. That's kind of missing the point of myspace to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, agree that you do have to accept, to a degree, that myspace is a youth domain, and that we should, as workers, avoid patrolling or attempting to control such an arena.
In the situation posted, I think the best thing to do is to have a general, broad and light-hearted conversation with the young person known to you about it, and alert them to the risks of binge drinking in that case, and also of over-stating your age on myspace too (risk of unwanted advances and such). Beyond this, I don't think it's appropriate for a youth worker to do more, unless other circumstances combine with these incuidents to indicate some other risk.
Well, I’d do nothing…if it came up in conversation I’d say what I believed was the “right” thing to do, but young people need to stretch their limits and take risks to assess just what is the done thing. Can you really set so much limits upon someone, especially on the internet to the point where the young person has no freedom to choose, to take life at their own pace and evaluate what they learn themselves rather than being told the right or wrong answers.
ReplyDeleteI do however find the whole idea of being friends with them on Myspace blurs the professional boundaries, which do need to be in place. Some people are okay with a lax of ground rules but I find myself not being completely comfortable with being friends with someone 24/7 via the internet unless I am in a deeper more meaningful relationship, which is what is not sought as a Youth / Welfare / Social worker, you simply advocate for their needs where necessary…and that is where the crux of this matter lies..is it really necessary to advocate for someone in this circumstance, I believe only if the person is leading a REAL LIFE lifestyle that would suggest cause for concern, and depending on how well you know them, it is your call.
Cya!
Moving away from the original dilemma but still on the topic of myspace. I am curious to have more discusion about youth workers who sign up to be a 'friend' on their own youth service/groups myspaces, using their personal myspace profiles.
ReplyDeleteI think this not only oversteps professional boundaries and is, at times, ethically questionable, but it invites young people into your private life, your friends private lives, your photos, your conversations, your sexuality, your lovers, your social life etc
I think that as a youth worker we have a duty of care to the client and that if there are issues of harm or misrepresentation leading to potential harm that they need to be addressed , the question is why did the client allow access to your organisation's myspace page knowing what is being displaying on their page and was it something that they are comfortable talking about. I would also remind them about internet safety ... in regards to boundaries and ethical dilemas I think it comes down to the same principles that you would use in identifying the client outside the service - let them make the first move.
ReplyDeleteThe internet leaves much room for misrepresentation and assessing the motives behind it will help assess the risks to the client. The same can be said for the worker having a personal myspace profile as well so its a catch 22.
A 2009 Sydney newspaper article about a graffiti court case (you know the one) makes reference to the young offender’s social networking site, quoting things from it in a way that attempts to paint a particular picture about the young person’s attitude. How did the newspaper find the person’s social networking site page?
ReplyDeleteI’m interested to know what other youth workers think about this? Presumably, media sources could search any and all names that come up attached to news stories and then publish details of any website they happen to find something on. Should we be warning young people about the information they post on-line, or to what degree they allow it to be seen?
So, more to the point, is it common practice for the media to publish networking-site details of people in the public eye? And what, if anything, should we do about it? The application of such practice could have a big impact on young people (what if, for example, a rape victim had details of her social networking page made public in a newspaper in order to question her credibility?). The potential situations that could arise are of great concern to me as a youth worker.
As workers we all understand only too well the need to connect with young people, however how can this not be seen as a clear boundary issue? My Space is for friends by definition ...as that is what it in fact requests....and we are not 'friends' with the Young People we work with.If we start to blur boundaries as workers or in fact as agencies, how are we doing our job efficiently? If you read the the COE, I'm sure you will see this as clearly as I do. We are bound by our professional COE and this is essentially our behaviour in the workplace. Does this mean that part of our professional behaviour is now socialising with the young people we work with?
ReplyDelete