Martin McAndrew: Is social media dangerous or is it just something that needs to be managed?

I have contact with many professionals from many different professions in my line of work .  I recently spent the day in London with a teacher from a local school who had been nominated for a Times Educational Supplement award for a project we had worked on.

When I first started work on this 2 x BIMA award winning project I was amazed at the quality of modern schooling, It was amazing that girls of 13/14 where volunteering to stay late after school.  They were genuinely interested in project management, SEO, design, development, Ux, essentially they were so open to learning anything that was shared with them.  I was amazed at how relevant the program was at this school.  It honestly made me think in a few years when these girls enter the job market they are going to be so far ahead of where I was at their age.  Essentially if I had kid I would be doing everything I could to get them enrolled in this school and in the form of this particular teacher…  any way I digress.

The point of this blog post is looking at the dangers of social networking.

Many teachers are advised not to befriend their students on social media sites, the telegraph has written a story about doctors being advised not to socially connect with their patents.  I fundamentally disagree with this.

I was amazed at my first meeting with the school I have praised earlier in this post, none of the students has social media accounts.  No facebook, no twitter..  I think modern day education has to teach young people how to manage their online life.  Future employees, large corporations, marketing professionals can all tap into what you decide to share online, so people need to learn how to manage this, as it is something that is unlikely to go away.

I personally think that social networking should be encouraged, online networking is one of the largest business shifts in a generation.  I have connections with CEOs in New York, London, Paris.. but I also have a very very carefully managed online profile.

I generally split FaceBook as personal, and twitter, blogs, Google+ and linkedin as professional but I ensure every day that if my Boss, collegues or student from the school looked at my FaceBook, Googles index of me or any other online profile I would have nothing to hide.

I would show students, teachers, doctors, well everyone.. If you release something onto a server with a public facing IP, it is open to the world.  If it is you being drunk, pictures of you fighting etc the world will see it and it WILL come back to haunt you. 

Essentially you need to control your online profile to such a level that if you’re a teacher assume that your students can find everything online about you (and tell their parents).  If you are a doctor assume all of your patients can read all your online profiles.  

If you manage your online profiles correctly and be very tight with what you share there should be not reason to limit who sees your data, as ultimately with a bit of pocking around most people can find out most things about you.  

Your online profile is more important and more pubic that your offline profile and needs attention and work just like everything else.

Written by Martin McAndrew

Twitter: @MartinMcAndrew