Monitoring Students' Social Behavior

The article "School District Starts Monitoring Students' Social Media Behavior"--http://mashable.com/2013/09/25/ca-geo-listening/--is also one that jumped out at me as I was reading through Mashable.com.  As the wife of a teacher and mother of a middle school girl it is a topic that is of particular interest to me, and as I commented on another post, I am on the fence regarding the issue.  It seems that there is a fine line between the authority a school district has in the lives of its students.  Does the authority to monitor and issue discipline stand only during school hours or on school grounds, or does a school system have the right to extend its jurisdiction beyond into the private lives of its students?  Even in that, one could argue that social media is not private.  I would have to say that I lean more towards the belief that it is the responsibility of the parent and guardian of students to monitor the social media behavior of his or her student.  And that means parents and guardians being involved and aware of what is happening in the world of social media.  It is important for school personnel to be on the up and up as well, but I am not convinced it is their role to discipline a student for what is expressed online outside of school and school time. For example, a student at my daughter's school created a twitter last year that was very inflammatory towards several other female students.  My daughter was one that was mentioned as one of the "10 Ugliest Girls".

It was a highly inappropriate twitter account that was hurtful to many people.  It was reported to the school, and parents were irate that the would not investigate to find the source and punish the responsible person.  On the other hand, I posted this picture to my Facebook and encouraged all parents to know what their kids are posting and to be involved in their teen's social media world.  It sparked a lot of very interesting conversation, and I had many parents respond that it was just the kick in the butt they needed to take some initiative to dive into the world of social media that had previously seemed so intimidating.  I realize that in some cases a school district MAY have to get involved and that there are very serious issues especially when it comes to bullying and sexting, but I am also convinced that if more parents and guardians became involved in and aware of their child's social media life that some of the issues of cyber bullying and social media abuse could be prevented.