Social Media and the classroom

I have wrestled with the use of social media since my early days as a student-teacher on my first practicum. One of the kids in my class asked me my first name. I didn’t think too much of it, and, in fact, I thought that he was just trying to be disrespectful, so I told him to get back to work, and didn’t think too much about it after that. However, my full name was on the school website, and in due course, I had my own link on ratemyteacher.com and was getting friend requests from my students on my Facebook account.
Why did they want to know me? What did they think they were going to find? My Facebook account is full of pictures of my bees, and my dog, and my wife, and my truck, and a million other banal details that make up a life. There are no pictures of me getting wasted, or shirtless, or groping others, so who cares?
I still do not allow students to have access to my Facebook page, being a younger male teacher; it just does not seem worth it to me. However, I have softened on the first name thing. I still require my students to call me Mr. Cooper as a sign of respect, but I tell them my full name and try to share my beekeeping hobby as well as other small details about my life to show them that I am a still a person despite being a teacher. My students seem to be happy about this détente. I explain to them that, yes, I have Facebook and twitter accounts, but no, I don’t add, or follow, students. I tell them that it is a personal choice, and they seem to be happy to accept that answer.

I recently read a book Michael Harris entitled, “The End of Absence”, which may sum up my feelings about social media in my life both personal and professional. In his book, Harris writes about his generation, of which I am a part, being the last to know what it is like to grow up without the internet, and, by extension, social media.
I am on the cusp of this generation. I am a digital immigrant. When I was around ten years old I had my first experience with dial-up internet, which means that most of my foundational years was spent without YouTube, vine, snapchat, Instagram, ask.fm, Facebook, and twitter. I had periods of boredom. I occasionally gazed at my navel. I don’t do that anymore, nor does anyone else it would seem. The pith of Harris’ argument is that absence no longer exists. Social media is everywhere, and always on, always ready to fill any blank space with its particular brand of noisy entertainment. Students, and their teachers, do not have empty time anymore. Bored? Better check the phone.
I think the reason I don’t want to fully embrace social media in the classroom, is that I don’t really want my class to slip into my pocket and follow me home. I have a hard enough time separating my work time from my down time. Case in point, I am writing this blog post on a Sunday morning for an instructional course on distance education.
Maybe that why students so readily accept my refusal to accept them as Facebook friends. Perhaps they don’t really want to know about my every comings and goings, it’s just the only way they know how to say “I like and respect you”. Perhaps it’s better to have a little absence.