Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 17, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 30, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Social Media Surveillance in Schools: Re-thinking Public Health Interventions in the Digital Age
ABSTRACT
Growing public concern around issues related to students’ safety and well-being has led schools and school districts to contract with private companies to implement new tools and technologies that target and surveil students’ activity on social media websites. While innovative solutions to address students’ safety and health are needed, it is unclear whether the implementation of social media surveillance in schools is an effective strategy. There is no evidence to support the claims made by social media surveillance companies, as well as the schools that hire them, that these technologies can address the myriad of public health issues facing today’s students. Instead, these digital surveillance systems may only serve to exacerbate the problems that youth, especially those from historically marginalized groups, already face.
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