Everyone knows that students love and have social media, but what about teachers? Many students have tried to find their teachers on social media, and regularly, some of them succeed. Seeking to maintain professional boundaries, teachers have been left with no other choice but to hide their accounts, going by secret names, or privating their personal social media accounts. In some cases, they’ve even deleted their accounts altogether.
When certain teachers were interviewed they said they did have a personal social media account. All of them were private, but some of them didn’t used to be.
When interviewing students, most said they had tried to find their teachers on any social media platform. There are a couple of teachers who have had students find and go through their accounts. As a result, the teachers have made their accounts private to prevent this from happening any further. Some teachers have even gone as far as to go by a fake name online. They have said that going by a fake name is a must so students can’t find them. When going by a fake name, the anonymous teachers say that they let their family and friends know what they go by online
so they can stay close to them while staying anonymous to other people, specifically to keep their personal and school lives separate.
“Many students have tried to follow me,” said counseling center assistant Mrs. McCoy. “Not like they would find anything because it’s set to private.” This makes everyone so confused as to why someone would even try to search for a person and follow them even after seeing the fact that it is private. It can be found that many students enjoy the thrill and thought of teachers having their own lives outside of school. “It is just a journey to find them,” says an anonymous 8th grader, “It makes it almost a challenge with the different names.” Teachers having to change their names online wouldn’t be such a problem if there weren’t so many students attempting to find their teachers, making it feel like stalking.
Many of the staff here at Cavelero have seen the social media effects on students’ lives. However, the students don’t know how this affects their social media use. “I’ve seen many students post personal information on social media,” Finance Advisor Mrs. Johnston says. “Wait until after you’ve done something noteworthy and appropriate to post.” Many teachers are using social media responsibly and the students could take a few pieces of advice from them. On social media, students can be seen posting multiple things that have personal information in them. One of the downsides to posting personal information online is that you can’t always trust who will follow you. This can lead teachers also to have their accounts private and hide everything about their own lives so they don’t feel like they are being watched by their students.
If teachers and staff feel the need to make their own social media accounts private, what else do they feel the need to do because of the student body? We as a student body need to realize the difference between a personal and professional relationship between teachers and not push the limits on what we should and shouldn’t do online.
