Florida Public Schools to Spy on Students’ Social Media

The Orange County Public Schools District have chosen to monitor people’s social activity in their area, the district announced on Thursday that it has signed up with a service called Snaptrends, which bills itself as “Pioneering Location-Based Social Media Discovery.” It promises to “quickly identify actionable insights.”

The public schools insisted that the purpose of the software was “to proactively prevent, intervene and (watch) situations that may impact students and staff.” 

Cnet contacted the Orange County Public Schools District to ask how far this monitoring will stretch — current information suggests that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube will be monitored for specific keywords.

They also asked what the district would say to a parent who believes this is unnecessary stalking of their kids. However, there was no response.Schools from Huntsville, Ala,. to Glendale, Calif., have decided that they must, in one form or another, monitor what their students do on social media.

It does make me wonder what level of detail they can see, on a personal and irrelevant level, surely that is an invasion of students privacy?

We’ve all become used to Google, Facebook and other commercial cohorts scanning our messages and generally following us around 24 hours a day. Somewhere buried deep within us might be the idea that they’re only doing it for commercial reasons and don’t care one whit about our personal lives and pre dilections — unless they can make money out of them. It’s business, not personal.

With schools, it’s a little different. They’re specifically monitoring what kids do in private — even if that might be publicly available information — with a view to preventing bad behavior.

Thank you to Cnet for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of SnapTrends