Bet Hannon Non-Profit Media

You (or your board or your insurance company) might have concerns about the saftey and liability of your organization when you connect with minors through social networks like Facebook.  In some situations, these concerns might be fairly high– for example that a parent who has been court-ordered to have no contact will “find” their child through event postings on your FB pages.  Under more “normal” circumstances, most of us realize that many youth are already on FB and we hope their parents are monitoring the FB use of their children.

If you wanted to do something organizationally to increase youth safety, what could you do?  You could create a private FB group for your youth.  A FB group set to private means that the Administrator of the group has to approve all members who ask to join the group, and the wall and posts of the group are not visible to anyone but group members.

Realize that a private group comes with several costs:

1. You can private message on FB with private group members, but no group posts will appear in any news feeds–you will lose that avenue for promoting your group.
2. Groups are not visible or accessible on smart phones, which may not be a big deal today, but as more youth begin to have smart phones, this will be more of a set-back.  (And remember, once you’ve established yourself with a group or a page– to switch, you will have to start over.)  [This is not true any longer!]
3. One less visible cost is the sense of inhospitality that is conveyed when a group is “closed”.

If you do make a group private, you might explain why you are doing it: “To protect the safety of minors online, this group is private– but if you’re in grades 9-12, we’d love to have you join us!  Send us a request to join!”

What do you think?  How are you trying to protect the safety of youth online as you connect with them through social media?