BERLIN – School system officials are hoping a new task force will help curb social media issues in local schools.
Following recent controversy surrounding social media use by students at Stephen Decatur High School, Superintendent Jerry Wilson has created a social media task force to study and report on the issues generated through students’ use of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Wilson says the growth of social media in recent years has been astounding and that it’s important students are encouraged to use it in a way that will produce good relationships.
“One of the things I think is going to be important is ‘cyber-civility’ or digital citizenship,” he said.
Wilson said students should learn to use social media responsibly, whether they were in the school environment or not.
“If it’s disruptive to the school environment, even if it’s a private student account, it’s still something the school needs to intervene around,” he said.
Wilson says the task force will be made up primarily of assistant principals from throughout the county. He believes they are the ideal people to tackle the issue because they routinely interact with students as well as parents.
“Assistant principals are frequently in a position to work with students on issues that can be complicated,” Wilson said.
During the ensuing months, he hopes the task force will be able to come up with administrative regulations to help guide officials when social media issues arise as well as a report on ways educators can promote “cyber-civility” in local schools. He says it’s a message that will even be shared at the elementary school level.
“In those cases, it’s going to be less discipline and more around ways the schools might help students understand we all need to be tolerant and work in a civil manner,” Wilson said.
The creation of the social media task force comes after a student’s racist Instagram post and videos of two student fights at Decatur were posted online. Wilson said those situations pushed him to form the task force, particularly after seeing social media create problems in other areas.
“The Decatur circumstances contributed to moving this ahead but I’ve been seeing some of this taking place in other school systems,” he said.
He hopes to have a report from the task force by the end of the school year.