I’m wondering how many people out there have created / use / are writing a community policy / leadership policy on the use of social network websites and communities in their youth ministries / other ministries.
I’ve bee talking to a few people over the last couple of months about Social Networking and leadership, safety, professionalism, image and how they connect with our ministries and am interested to see if many others have been talking about the same thing.
In one circumstance the worker expressed that their prospective employer had already googled their name, checked out their facebook account and myspace prior to their interview, in another we’d been talking about what constitutes a relationship, in particular an inappropriate relationship online with students and in another it was expressed that the educational institution they work in has a policy about teachers, social networking and internet usage, in particular as to how they talk about themselves online, who they add as friends, what kinds of things they talk about on blogs etc.
It’s my feeling that most people seem to just go “thats where young people are” and go there without thinking of the broader aspects of leadership, responsibility, ethics and safety so would be interested in hearing people’s thoughts.
For some thoughts on how one might develop such a policy check out this article on the YouthCulture weblog: Safegaurding Young People on SNS
If you’re keen on thinking more about the use of Social Network sites and Youth Work check out the full “Youth Work and Social Networking – Final Report (PDF)” by the Youth Work and Social Networking Research Project
