MissEducated is looking to produce a Social Networking and Cyber Bullying policy for her club.
In particular, she’s looking for a disciplne procedure if a complaint of cyber bullying is received.
Aside from obvious guidelines, what should the relationship be between adults (e.g. club coaches) and gymnasts on social networking sites like Facebook?
The big question: Should coaches friend gymnasts on Facebook?
… If so, should coaches friend both child and parent, when possible?
When I took over a club as Head Coach 2yrs-ago, the very first thing I did was to line-up the girls … and give them a speech about Facebook. It is a real issue. I’m surprised there have not been more Facebook horror stories.
I’m not so much worried about death threats, as this:
Please leave a comment if you know of any set of club guidelines available.
related – Mashable – Harvard Study Finds Teens Online Lack Ethics
22 comments ↓
As a career coach I do not think any coach should be facebook friends with their athletes. I think this is especially true if you are a head coach. We are the same as teachers and there has to be that ethical line that we do not cross. We can be friendly to them in the gym but in relaity we are not their friends we are their coaches/teachers/mentors
At the gym I coach at, myself (compulsory director) and the Optional Team director friend gymnasts on facebook. It is more to “keep an eye on them” than anything, as a few years ago we had to have a parents’ meeting about Facebook and Myspace, where some of the parents actually believed their child did not use such social networking when in reality they did and were generally lying about their age in order to have one in the first place. However, the owner/head coach does not friend the gymnasts. As for me, I clump them all in a group in the Privacy settings so that all they see is my profile picture, some info, and my wall.
I agree, I think a coach and athlete are not friends, and my daughter in particular should not know or see her coach dressed in appropriately and out for a night in the club, because I think it takes away a lot of the mentor aspect in coaching. I don’t thinnk parents should befriend coach eaither because they need to have a line of gymnastics and personal.
As for cyber bullying, kids will either do it on facebook or in the locker room. or myspace or msn..so many venues but if you take the coach out of it the coach can’t get involved period and it becomes between the athletes and the parents.
I’ve said this before, and I still think it is true:
We are their coaches/teachers/mentors, and that’s exactly why we need to be their FB friends as well.
Kids need to know parents and responsible adults are in the vicinity of the areas they spend their time. That knowledge will help reduce the number of inappropriate incidents in the cyber world the same as in the real world. Children are more mindful of their behavior when they know an adult is present or could be present. It is for their protection.
Furthermore, kids need to see parents demonstrating appropriate use of FB (which assumes parents will use it appropriately as well…not always guaranteed).
Proper education is essential, and girls need to know that what they post, what pictures they put up, or who they chat with and friend can have consequences. Therefore, everyone needs to be on there who has a role in that child’s life so that anyone can be there in the event that something wrong happens.
I would befriend my gymnasts and students, and parents, and I’d create a FB profile for the gym itself and have the kids and parents befriend it as well.
If FB is something adults are afraid of, then will it become a place where predators can lurk. If it’s open and visible and daylight shines on all of it, then it will be much, much safer.
If you have a daughter under a certain age (not sure what that age should be as it would depend on the maturity of the child) then the parent should also have the password for the account. The computer should be left in an open and common area of the home so parents can see who their daughter is chatting with if necessary. If your daughter is chatting with someone you don’t know and haven’t met in real life, look into it. If your daughter befriends someone you think is suspicious, look into it. Parents should also be conscious of their computer’s webcam, disabling it if necessary, and teaching their daughter what is an appropriate use of the webcam. The webcam is so leaps and bounds dangerous, tantamount to having the whole world in your daughter’s bedroom, that I wouldn’t scoff at a parent who disabled it.
FB isn’t going away, so pretending like it’s not a thing isn’t going to help anyone. It’s not about an “ethical line,” Don. I know what you think “friend” means, and it’s a classic teacher perspective to say “I’m not your friend, I’m your parent/teacher/coach.” That’s fine in a certain way, but it’s extremely outdated and irrelevant for the internet world. That’s a total misunderstanding of what FB is and how it works.
If you were walking around the mall and saw one of your gymnasts about to get into some trouble, of any kind (some kids threatening her, pressuring her to commit a crime, etc.) wouldn’t you find a way to step in, somehow, some way, to help that girl make the right decision? Of course you would. FB requires the same parental and adult opportunity even more so. Yes, children do need to make certain mistakes for themselves, and to learn from those. But the problem with internet mistakes is that internet mistakes never go away. The real world will forget that you stole a candy bar when you were 11, but it won’t forget that you took your shirt off for your boyfriend and let him capture a screen shot of it and email it to all his friends and post it on websites and and and…
And if you wouldn’t step in, then I question whether you actually have their best interest in mind.
I am a club coach, and constantly wonder about this situation and I have been told it is important to keep an eye on possible gymnasts who are looking into college scholorships. To a recruiter this page is more like a reseme and it can hinder their prospects of being on a team. Therefore I use it as a tool to make sure the girls are not putting on any pictures of alcohol or parties, or any other “subjective” material. I also have it a point to have their parents do the same.
Thank you for everyone’s great comments so far! These are really helpful, and particular thanks to JustAnotherOpinion for putting so much detail and thought into your reply. What you say makes sense and is currently the line that we follow at club. We add those gymnasts who request our friendship but make the attempt to befriend their parent also where possible.
Many of our gymnasts use Facebook as a medium to let us know if they won’t be able to attend training for some reason or another, whether or not they want to be entered for upcoming competitions and many other things. This was not initiated by us but by the athletes themselves and it makes sense to them. Very few of them go online to check their email because they don’t use email anymore. Everyone they might want to contact is on Facebook so they log onto the internet to check that. It is proving to be a very effective method of communication! We still send anything that goes through Facebook by email to the gymnast and the parent also.
Seeing as though Facebook is so very prevalent in the lives of the children and teens that we coach cyberbullying is unfortunately going to come hand in hand with that. I appreciate the comment above that says if coaches are not friends with their gymnasts on Facebook then the bullying is not their problem but I just don’t see it that way. Bullying in any form directed towards a club member becomes the club’s problem whether it happens onsite at the gym or elsewhere. I could not let one of my gymnasts be victimised by another whilst I stood back in the gym and said “It’s not my problem.” It’s the same if they bullying is happening outside the gym or online. I’ve been told that the answer lies in clear expectations for the gymnasts’ behaviour online. I’m coaching teenage boys who are great friends but all they do is post abuse on each others’ walls on Facebook. Not because they’re bullying but because they’re friends. The rip each other in real life and wind each other up so for them it is logical to continue this on Facebook. It’s not my place to tell them what they can and can’t write unless it is causing problems for another club member.
I think that the best thing we can do is set out clear guidelines for club members which state that bullying of any kind will not be tolerated. It needs to remind athletes to print or save any abusive or hurtful comments as proof. We need to inform gymnasts that if they are involved in bullying of any kind that their parents will be contacted and that there will be consequences for their actions.
I didn’t mean to say if it happens for it not to be the coaches problem in regards to cyber bullying, I meant that if the coach does not have access to either social media accounts what occurs at midnight on friday is up to the athlete/parents to discuss and for the parents/athlete to bring up to the gym/coach when appropriate, because if the coach by chance steps in and types a response it becomes a cyber war so to speak, but if brought to the coach via adult/athlete it can be dealt with in real time and with no misinterpretations and immediate consequences… just saying… cyber bullying exists..it is unfortunate but I still stand that a coach and athlete can join a common gym page but should not befriend each other on a personal level.
side note for discipline– misinterpretation of written context can be totally taken the wrong way with dangerous results
ie/ let’s eat, grandma as opposed to let’s eat grandma..
silly one but you see the ramifications.
As for discipline 1. warning and meeting with athletes/coach(program head)
2. meeting with athletes/coach/parents discussing behaviour and bully attending a program on bullying
3. suspension of athlete for set period of time (mandatory bully program with counselling)
4. removal of athlete from gym permanently
no friggin’ way a coach should be on Facebook with his/her gymnasts…..e-v-e-r.
we’re not “friends”…….
Rick?
As a coach and a teacher I think that it is important to have boundaries between myself and my gymnasts/students. This includes keeping my address, telephone number, and facebook accounts private. Teenagers have a hard time keeping boundaries and need to know that we are not friends.
The kids who are cyber bulling or making poor internet choices will do many things in order to stay out of trouble. One, they will unfriend you. Two, they will open an account under a false name. Three, they will change their settings so that you can’t see anything. Many kids can access their accounts on their cell phones and don’t need to use their home computers. Four, they will use a friends accounts to do the bullying.
I am very available during school and gym hours to talk to students and parents. If they need to get a hold of me, they all have cell phones or house phones and pick up the phone to call. They can grab me at the end of practice or during my lunch at school.
To me a gym web page/facebook is much different. This is an informational page, not personal.
As a coach and a teacher I think that it is important to have boundaries between myself and my gymnasts/students. This includes keeping my address, telephone number, and facebook accounts private. Teenagers have a hard time keeping boundaries and need to know that we are not friends.
The kids who are cyber bulling or making poor internet choices will do many things in order to stay out of trouble. One, they will unfriend you. Two, they will open an account under a false name. Three, they will change their settings so that you can’t see anything. Many kids can access their accounts on their cell phones and don’t need to use their home computers. Four, they will use a friends accounts to do the bullying.
I am very available during school and gym hours to talk to students and parents. If they need to get a hold of me, they all have cell phones or house phones and pick up the phone to call. They can grab me at the end of practice or during my lunch at school.
To me a gym web page/facebook is much different. This is an informational page, not personal. This doesn’t mean that I think teachers/coaches should turn a blind eye to bullying. However, our personal lives should stay that way.
I’ll do a summary post in a few days of comments. Let us know too if and when you DRAFT a policy.
… My guess is that very few gyms have one right now.
@gym mom
Thank you for clarifying and I’m sorry I misunderstood what you meant – it makes much more sense to me now.
Also thank you for your discipline procedures – that system of sanctions looks pretty good and I might just borrow it to run by our other coaches and commitee members!
I will not friend any child that I coach or teach on Facebook. It is inappropriate for what I feel are obvious reasons. If I were male, I’d be 100 times more afraid to do this.
Jim, and Don, I tried to explain that. Being a FB friend is NOT the same thing as being a friend in real life. Being a FB friend does not mean you’re hanging out with the girls in their basement when their parents aren’t home. It doesn’t mean you’re going to movies together or talking about boys together or anything like that. It’s just the term Facebook used to grant permission from the user to allow access to each other’s activities, if they choose to.
You can be FB friends AND never do anything with it. It is tantamount to having someone’s email address or phone number, but never emailing them or calling them.
You have the addresses of all your athletes, but that doesn’t mean you go to their houses all the time. Being FB friends is very similar. That you have access to information is different from actually accessing the information. The ability to misuse and abuse something is far, far, far distinct from actually misusing and abusing it.
FB is just one more tool, whether you use it appropriately or not is an entirely different issue, and it can be done very professionally and very safely. Without trying to insult you, I reckon this is a largely generational misunderstanding.
As a point of explaining what being a Facebook “Friend” means, I’ll give some examples, which are entirely normal and consistent with the average FB user, especially if you had FB during college:
In addition to being friends with almost everyone I have even blinked at in the years since joining FB some 6 years ago now, I am friends or have been friends with:
Numerous organizations, both actual and facetious (Gymnastike, or the Derek Zoolander School For Kids Who Don’t Read Good, and many others).
Campus Statues from schools I have attended and from schools I haven’t attended.
Works of art I have seen in person and works of art I would like to see in person.
Fictional characters.
Fake celebrity profiles.
Other various inanimate objects.
And, last semester, during a particularly stressful week while studying for my sales and leases final, I was briefly engaged to the Uniform Commercial Code. We got married the night before the final and subsequently divorced when it was over.
Obviously, a person had to create those profiles. Sometimes I knew who did it, other times I didn’t. But nonetheless, being a “friend” of Facebook Jesus never had the kind of weight I’m told actually being Christ’s friend is supposed to carry. All together, the term “friend” is entirely meaningless, and shouldn’t be feared by anyone.
Just so you know, JAO, I’m going to defend the advantages of friending my gymnasts IN SOME CASES, as well.
But we’ll be in the minority.
I think the discipline suggested by gym mom is bang on and will suggest to our board for policy . I like the attending bully and counseling program what a great way to break the cycle
I wil ‘friend’ gymnasts if they ask me but if they’re under 18 I will do as Morgan above does and put them in my restricted group where they can only see some of my info, none of my photos, none of my wall posts, nor can they post on my wall. Effectively they see very little of my life (which is good, I don’t need kids seeing pics of my wedding, my New Years Eve antics or the crazy fancy dress party I recently went to) but I can see and interact with them. A lot of the coaches at our gym do the same- ‘friend’ kids but restrict them from seeing their adult, personal lives. I do this because I can monitor what THEY are saying on FB as we’ve had issues previously. That being said, I’m also ‘friends’ with most of their parents too.
I feel I’m a mentor to these kids and I like to see that they’re doing ok in normal life. Most of the kids I coach come from low socioeconomic areas and need support in life not just in the gym. I have had to help an ex-gymnast work through a teen pregnancy, one ran away from home, another through bad friend groups at school who were caught up with drugs etc (mostly after quitting gym). Currently one of the girls i used to coach is, at the age of 17, going through a horrendous break-up which has included getting a tattoo and constantly posting statuses which are make me worry about her mental state. Through FB I have been able to offer help and advice- from someone this girl looked up to.
A coach in the gym isn’t merely a job but we’re a major influence in the lives of young girls. I think, when used well, FB provides an additional tool in which to do so. If you restrict the kids from seeing into your personal life then its just like a day in the gym but online.
These comments are great and it’s brilliant to read so many different opinions. Thank you everybody who has commented so far. JAO I loved you examples of FB friends over the past year!
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[...] club cyber bullying policy? — Gymnastics Coaching.com – MissEducated is looking to produce a Social Networking and Cyber Bullying policy for her club. In particular, she’s looking for a disciplne procedure if a complaint of cyber bullying is received. Aside from obvious guidelines, … [...]
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