Thirty years ago, a time when iPhones, Twitter, Facebook and computers in almost every home were but distant dreams in Barbados, the advent and explosion of social media sounded more like science fiction than anything close to reality. Not so anymore.
Today, Barbados is connected to every part of the universe with the click of the mouse. According to the World Bank, Barbados had more cellphones than people, 110 mobile telephone subscriptions per 100 people; 77 per cent of the country’s homes had at least one computer in 2010; and 74 per cent of the households had access to the Internet.
Indeed, World Bank figures indicate that Barbados has as much Internet access, percentage-wise, as Australia, Austria, the European Union, Canada, the United States and Britain, all of which have on average 74 per cent.
With the far-flung areas of the globe reduced to a village and everyone using the latest telecommunications gadgets to talk about everything from their country’s declining economic plight, intimate sexual matters affecting the youth and about the goings on in schools and social organizations and how their supervisors are managing their time, few things remain sacred.
“I am shocked when I go on Facebook and see what people are saying about themselves in Barbados and how they are communicating with the rest of the world,” said a Bajan grandfather in Washington who admits to being a newcomer to Twitter. “I resisted the social media for a while but I can’t do it any longer. Young people in Barbados should be careful about the stuff they are putting out there about themselves.”
How come? Not only old fogeys are sounding that warning. And students should heed the advice.
“Young people may be technologically adept, but they require guidance and support to ensure that they take a long-term view of the potential consequences of the material they share online,” Dubliner Bernadette John, a lecturer in digital professionalism at King’s College in London, said.
Teachers have a special responsibility to ensure that their youthful charges understand these facts of life and act accordingly. The alarm is being sounded because more and more employers are turning to Google, Facebook, Twitter and other sources to find out what potential employees are thinking and telling their friends about their daily lives, including their attitudes to work, money and supervision. What they are saying to their friends online tells much more about themselves than they would like a prospective employer to know.
John said recently that college and university students should be aware that what used to be a private conversation with friends is no longer private when the information is exchanged online.
A bank or insurance company looking for a management trainee or a young professional for a highly specialized position can “Google” a person’s name to find out what’s going on in that person’s life, to check out the digital profile of prospective recruits. John cited a recent case in Britain in which a teacher and an assistant lost their jobs for making disparaging comments online about their students, calling them “inbred” and “thick”.
Students, insisted John, should think about the flow of information online and how an employer would discover things about a worker by going online. She had a word of advice for teachers too, especially when they are posting photographs or recalling exciting escapades. They can send the wrong message about social class, finances or intimacy.
The bottom line, warned Katherine Donnelly, education editor of the Irish Independent newspaper in Dublin, “Top graduates could find themselves unemployable because of what they are posting online.”
But students aren’t alone. Teachers must exercise care about privacy and communications with their students and, “consider very carefully the kinds of platforms with which they are engaging”, John advised.
It’s a whole new world out there and what you say today can come back and haunt you two, three, even five years from now.
