An addiction? An illness? Or harmless entertainment?

Last week, my journalism students proposed an article about Social Media Anxiety Disorder, or SMAD. According to The Huffington Post, the creator of the term is "Julie Spira, author of "The Rules of Netiquette." (Just a note that SMAD is not an actual, medically recognized condition at this point.)" Symptoms are as varied as freaking out if you forget your power cord to recharge your device during the day to taking your device into the restroom with you. (So that's how all those iPhones wind up sitting in rice to dry out!) Others say they're neglecting their children or losing relationships because they spend so much time on the phone/tablet/whatever.

I really got into Facebook after I decided not to go to my 20th high school reunion. They set up a page for the Class of '88, and it was fun to see how people were doing, and how their lives turned out. It also kind of makes me chuckle to myself that I'm now "friends" with people who wouldn't give me the time of day when we were students together. I don't consider myself to be suffering from SMAD, but I do participate in some habits that I shouldn't. I'm guilty of looking at my phone during a meal with friends to see if there's anything interesting on Facebook. And I do check my phone at school (usually in the bathroom). But I'm able to go whole blocks in school without it and even an entire evening. My students, however, can't seem to, and that does concern me.

There's not only the issue of giving away too much information to strangers. Though I think our children are more educated about that now, horrible things still happen when children are taken advantage of online by preying adults. And I also worry about cyber bullying and students airing all their dirty laundry (breakups, makeups, hookups, and mistakes) online, without the real understanding of how that could all come back to haunt them. Our school started a "pause before you post" campaign, just asking for the very basics of impulse control. Are you sure you want that out there for all the world to see?

I do think there is some educational value. Students are reading and writing, though sloppy text-style writing makes me nuts when I see it in a formal paper. I have to keep reminding students that their pencil won't automatically add apostrophes in contractions or capitalize your i when it is used as a pronoun. And, yes, I have had a student turn in a formal paper with text abbreviations such as u and ur.

But I know students also use it to talk to one another about assignments or to share questions and answers to help one another prepare for a lesson. And I think that an understanding of other people and the rest of the world is available through social networking. A news item might creep into your news feed or a take on a topic that you'd never considered before. There's also the fact that it is a good way to disseminate information to a lot of people very quickly. For example, there were bomb threats four of five days last week at a high school/middle school in the county where I teach. The schools are connected, so both have to be evacuated when something like that happens. Two of the days, the evacuated students had to be held on buses because it was too cold to keep them outside. Parents were able to learn quickly that their students were safe, but also that the buses would be delayed in much of the county as a result of that. While that's not really an educational benefit, it does point to the speed and breadth of information that can go out over social networking sites.

I do think schools have a responsibility to help students learn to use social networking responsibly. Pause before you post was a decent idea, but it was a one-and-done. Counseling did it, gave everyone little pins, and then it just dropped off the radar. Like anything like that, it needs reminding.