Why Teachers Should Not Be Facebook Friends with

Students
Since the times when Facebook and other social media networks gained popularity, the
word “friends” has evolved. Along with the traditional meaning, it also started to mean people
whom you get online updates and messages from, whom you inform about your recent
activities, whom you get in touch with virtually, and so on. At the same time, a “friend” on
Facebook can actually be a random person, a stranger whom you have seen only once or
twice.
People add new “friends” easily; this is related especially to teenagers and students, who
tend to “friend” everyone they meet, including their teachers. Some people see it as a
positive sign, assuming that virtual friendship will help make studying more fun and simple.
However, there are strong reasons behind teachers’ decisions not to add students as friends
on Facebook or other social media platforms.

The most significant concern is privacy, and perhaps teachers are more vulnerable in these
terms than teenagers. Through Facebook and other social media platforms, students might
learn details from the lives of their teachers which they are not supposed to learn:
information about intimate relationships, vacations, and so on. This does not mean a teacher
has no right to spend time the way he or she wants, and share information about it; it means
that before doing this, teachers have to consider the possible effect and the consequences
of such sharing. This connection works both ways though: a teacher might use Facebook to
see the details of their students’ most recent party on campus, for example. Needless to say
that instead of making relationships between teachers and students easier, such exposure
only makes them more intense: both teachers and students become vulnerable, and bear
more risks or harassment of different kinds.
This problem logically transforms into disciplinary issues. The teacher-student relationship is
often built on a hierarchical basis: students recognize their teacher as an outsider imbued
with certain authority; this is a natural border helping establish discipline. However, by
becoming digital friends with their students, teachers exhaust these borders and may lose
authority. It becomes more difficult for them to discipline and reason with students, because
they are (kind of) personally acquainted, and have a (sort of) relationship beyond the
classroom. Besides, students with personal Facebook relationships with their teachers could
be given extra credits or benefits in terms of studying (Patch.com).

Erasing borders between teachers and students might lead to unexpected and inappropriate
consequences, including sexual relationships, which is not just illegal, but also considered
immoral by many people. Cases of such relationships are numerous; for example, in 2013, a
former cheerleader and a high school teacher, Sarah Jones, pleaded guilty to having sex
with a 17-year-old student, Cody York, who was careless enough to upload photos of himself
and his teacher on Facebook. These photos went viral, causing a scandal and drawing
attention to the problem of student-teacher relationships once again (The Current). It does
not mean that Facebook relationships usually transform into personal or sexual ones; it
means, however, that relationships beyond the borders established by a society might end
up in an unexpected and inappropriate way that can hurt both a student and a teacher.
There exist at least several significant reasons why teachers should not add their students
as friends on Facebook. One of them is privacy concerns: teachers who share their lives on
Facebook—as well as students doing the same—cannot feel safe knowing their posts might
be seen by the wrong audience. Also, erasing borders between students and teachers might
not only lead to a drop of discipline, but sometimes transform into personal relationships,
which usually tends to end up in a scandalous and/or painful way. Therefore, teachers and
students should keep a certain distance, and communicate mostly within the limits of
studying.
Gadget Addiction
Science and engineering has made a gigantic leap forward in terms of making tech compact,
portable, and comfortable to use compared to the times when the first electric programmable
computer was introduced in 1943. At the end of 2015, carrying a miniature computer—a
smartphone—in a pocket has become commonplace; smartphones and other gadgets have become
a part of everyday life, and few people can imagine living without them. However, along with all the
positives of global computerization, there are also drawbacks that people should be aware of; one of
them is what psychologists call gadget addiction.

Generally speaking, gadget addiction is an obsession with your cellphone, tablet, or any other
electronic device, and their abusive usage. People who had to abstain from using their gadgets for a
period of time (usually for 1-3 days) displayed a variety of anxious behaviors, and managed to calm
down only when they regained access to their gadgets (IFR). Symptoms may differ in each individual
case, but the most distinctive of them directly points to gadgets as the source of anxiety.

One of the most common signs of developing gadget addiction is FOMO, or “the fear of missing out.”
People with this syndrome feel they must constantly stay online in order not to miss something
exciting or interesting their friends might share; the same refers to the fear to miss important news,
be it news on TV, or a message about the health of a person’s relatives or friends, and so on. FOMO
can also manifest itself in the desire to comment on every little thing happening online—sometimes
just to show a person is also “there,” participating in the lives of their friends. Other common
symptoms include, for example, the phantom cellphone syndrome. This is rather common even
among people who have little-to-no gadget addiction; in the case of this addiction, gadget users tend
to feel that their phone is vibrating, alerting them about incoming messages or updates. However,
when they check it, they see there were no alerts, it was their imagination. Anxiety when abstaining
from using a phone, or an urge to answer all incoming messages and emails immediately after
receiving them may also be a symptom of gadget addiction (Rappler).

Gadget addiction leads to attention disorders; for example, many people with this problem
experience the lack of concentration or an ability to focus on something for an extended duration;
they also tend to forget things easier (problems with long-term memory) and their decision-making
capabilities are in general poorer than among people who have no gadget addiction. Physiological
problems directly connected to a prolonged exposure to gadgets include the development of
shortsightedness, regular headaches, and aches in the neck and back (because of constantly leaning
above the screen of a gadget). Some researchers also connect gadget addiction to problems with
fertility, supporting their point with the over-exposure to electro-magnetic fields emitted by gadgets,
but this thesis needs to be checked. And this is not to mention stress and anxiety (caused by the
aforementioned FOMA and comparing one’s real life to the virtual life in social media (news feeds),
communication disorders, and so on (Online-Therapy).

What is alarming is that recently gadget addiction started to develop among children of a rather
young age; if a couple of years ago psychologists were talking about teenage addiction to gadgets,
nowadays specialists tend to believe a child may develop this addiction earlier—starting from the
age of 11. According to recent research, in which around 2,200 young people participated,
approximately 65% of children aged between 11 and 17 take their gadgets to bed to be able to
browse the Internet before sleep or to play games (Independent.co.uk). If a child shows a lack of
interest towards activities he or she used to enjoy before, when a child becomes excessively
aggressive or defensive when their usage of gadgets is mentioned, or when a child starts lying about
their time spent with the gadget, it might mean he or she has developed an addiction to some
extent (World of Moms).

A new age also means new diseases, including psychological ones. From this point, gadget addiction
will be typical for the 21st century—the age when computers have become portable and compact,
when everyone has access to the Web, and when all the entertainment in the world is at one’s
fingertips. It does not mean this addiction is normal, though; people with gadget addiction display
several troubling symptoms, such as the fear of missing something important when offline; a
detachment from close people and favorite activities in favor of gadgets; headaches, poor vision,
social anxiety, and so on. Besides, even children seem to have been developing gadget addiction
recently, and this is already an alerting sign. This problem should be researched more attentively in
able to save children from incurring serious psychological and physical issues.