Raising Humans in a Digital World

by Diana Graber

  It all started in late 2016, when a get-to-know-you Facebook group called the “Harvard College Class of 2021” was set up for incoming freshmen. Some students broke off from this group, formed a private chat group, and shared memes about popular culture. From there another private group split off, this one calling itself “Harvard Memes for Bourgeois Teens,” and then “General Fuckups.” To enter this group’s discussion, students were required to post the most offensive meme they could come up with.

  In case you’re wondering what a meme (rhymes with team) is, it’s a captioned photograph or image that is meant to be funny. Often harmless, these visual images poke fun at everyday situations or events and are a popular form of communication on the internet today, especially among youth. Memes are also easily shareable, and the funniest ones tend to quickly go viral (i.e., be widely shared). Young people are experts at making and sharing memes. They are less expert, it appears, at understanding there’s no such thing as privacy on the platforms where they post these memes. As I tell my young students ad nauseum, nothing online is private. I repeat this so many times that by the end of eighth grade, my students are itching to get to high school, just so they never have to hear me say it again! But in my estimation, kids can never hear this enough. Sadly, it seems no one took the time to say it to these oh-so-smart, almost-Harvard students.

  According to The Harvard Crimson, where the story broke, content shared by the students in this private group included:

  •“Memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children”

  •Jokes suggesting that “abusing children was sexually arousing”

  •Punch lines “directed at specific ethnic or racial groups”

  •A meme referring to “the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child [as] ‘piñata time’”2

  Appalled by these posts, other prospective students reported the private page to Harvard administrators. One week later, ten students in the private group who had posted these memes had their admissions rescinded.

  This, my friends, is our collective failure.

  It’s the result of neglecting to teach the first generation of students born and raised on digital devices that there can be serious offline consequences for their online actions.

  COLLEGES ARE LOOKING

  Increasingly, what kids post online and what others post about them (i.e., their “digital reputations”) influences their future. According to a recent annual Kaplan Test Prep survey, more than two-thirds of colleges (68 percent) say it’s “fair game” to visit an applicant’s social media profile to help them decide who gets in. Nearly one in ten of the colleges surveyed said they had revoked an incoming student’s offer based on something they found online.3

  Conversely, according to an earlier Kaplan survey, of those admissions officers who do check a prospective student’s social media sites, 47 percent report finding information that gave them a positive impression of prospective students—up from 37 percent the previous year.4 Some of the things they found that positively impacted applicants’ admissions chances included the following:

  •A Twitter account that described an LGBTQ panel a student had facilitated for her school. Admissions officers said this made them “more interested in her overall” and it helped them “imagine how she would help out the community.”

  •Another student who had won an award included a picture of her receiving it, with her principal, on her personal page. An admissions officer said, “It was nice to see.”

  •One young lady had started a company with her mom, and admissions officers said, “It was cool to visit their website.”5

  Even if it is not a college’s official practice to check social media during the admissions process, individual readers for a college might. Beth Wiser, executive director of admissions for the University of Vermont, told CNN that, as a matter of policy, her school does not review a prospective student’s social media. But, she added, “if a student includes a link to a digital destination, a YouTube account, or possibly a social media platform, the reader of the application may check out that link.”6 Wiser shared an example of a student who was interested in organic gardening and wanted to major in food systems at the university. Online, she showcased work she had done in this area and then shared the link in her application. Wiser told CNN’s Kelly Wallace, who reported this story, “It did show a level of engagement that she’s really thought out well what her future plans are and how the university’s academic course of study really fit nicely with . . . things she’s already doing.”7

  More and more, colleges, employers, landlords, pet adoption agencies, and just about everyone else are turning to social media to learn more about the people they want to accept, hire, rent to, entrust with a living thing, or get to know better. So it’s important for young people to make wise decisions when building and maintaining their digital reputations, starting the moment they first venture online.

  CRAFTING A POSITIVE DIGITAL REPUTATION

  Helping young people craft positive social media profiles is the work and passion of Alan Katzman, an attorney living in New York City, who spent much of his early career serving as in-house legal counsel to several technology firms. One of the companies he worked with owned an investigative arm that employed ex-FBI, ex–Secret Service, and ex-NYPD detectives who were adept at finding out anything about anyone. Katzman observed how they utilized social media whenever they wanted to learn more about people they were investigating. They didn’t need search warrants, special investigative tools, or proprietary access to get the information they needed. It was all available online for free.

  “This was all so new to me,” Katzman told me. “If someone was claiming they were too broke to pay off a judgment yet posted a photo of their new Porsche on Facebook, the investigators had all the information they needed to pursue collection. I was intrigued.”8

  Katzman figured others must be using social media to vet people, too. He was right. He discovered that colleges and employers were going online to learn more about their applicants. “The prevailing expert advice at the time was that it was best for students to remove social media from the equation altogether. Under the guidance of ‘don’t let your social media damage your future,’ experts were largely telling students to shut down, delete, adopt an alias, or simply ‘clean’ social media before applying to college or seeking a job,” said Katzman. “I found this advice to be shortsighted and assumptively negative. If colleges and employers were looking to learn more about their applicants, then it stood to reason that applicants should be taught to post informative content that tells their story.”9

  Although Katzman saw a potential business opportunity in the making, he wasn’t quite ready to abandon his day job to pursue his hunch, until one rainy Sunday when he persuaded one of his daughters, then a high school sophomore, to help him clean their basement. During this task, she discovered a crate of vinyl record albums from Katzman’s youth.

  “Once I convinced her that the black discs actually played music, she insisted I set up my old stereo system, so she could take a listen. I obliged, and she couldn’t believe how good analog music sounded to her digitally trained ears,” he told me. A few days later, she asked her father if she could start a blog. “This was the first time I ever heard the word ‘blog,’” said Katzman. “Once she convinced me it was a safe thing to do, and I gave my permission, she shared her idea with me.”10

  Her idea was to research each album—to discover when it was released and what was going on in the world at the time—and then write a blog post about her discoveries. She ended up blogging about a half-dozen albums during that sophomore year, and then eight more the year after. Even with the distractions of her senior year, she produced a few more blog entries.

  Fast-forward five years. While a junior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Katzman’s daughter received an unsolicited email from someone working at a subsidiary of Sony Music. The sender was looking to hire a studen
t to do advance work for bands under contract to Sony, who would be playing in the Madison area. He’d found Katzman’s daughter on LinkedIn and had followed the link in her profile to her music blog. After reading it, he knew she was the person for the job.

  “That’s when I knew that I needed to execute my idea for what would become ‘Social Assurity,’” Katzman told me. “I realized students needed to learn that social media was a great way to make a positive first impression upon people who were making important decisions about their future. I also knew from my daughter’s experience that authentic and intelligent digital content could open doors of opportunity.”11

  Katzman’s plan was to show high school and college students how to use social media to showcase their skills, interests, talents, accomplishments, and volunteerism to colleges, graduate schools, scholarship committees, and employers. This is the service Katzman offers through Social Assurity today, and it keeps him plenty busy.

  IS IT WORTH THE WORK?

  While Katzman’s idea of helping kids use social media to showcase their hobbies and talents sounds great, it also seems like a lot of work. When I asked Katzman about this, he replied, “It still strikes me as odd that so many parents cling to the thinking that grades, test scores, a heartfelt five-hundred-word essay, and an abundance of after-school activities and AP classes will get their kids into the best schools, while these schools are valuing character, service, and commitment. Stories of genuine family and community service, proactive engagement with an activity or a cause, commitment, citizenship, and resilience enable a student to stand apart from other qualified applicants. Social media is the perfect platform to deliver these stories directly to an admissions officer’s desktop.”12

  Then he told me about Jack, a high-school student with a solid GPA. “But these days that’s not enough to ensure acceptance into the most selective colleges and universities,” said Katzman.

  But Jack had a story. He’d begun playing the viola at eight years of age and had kept at it throughout middle and high school, playing with both school and community orchestras. Jack knew he couldn’t miss a practice or rehearsal because it would be unfair to the other orchestra members. He had to develop time management skills to keep his grades up, while also pursuing his love of music. Katzman advised Jack to create a social media profile, where he could showcase his love and appreciation for music and also write about the important life lessons he was learning.

  “In its supplement to the Common Application,” Katzman explained, “Harvard typically asks whether there is any information the applicant would like to share that hasn’t already been disclosed.” When Jack got to this part of the application, he shared a link to his LinkedIn profile and suggested that admissions officers visit it to learn more about his extracurricular activities. A few weeks later, Jack called Katzman to report he’d received an alert from LinkedIn. Someone from Harvard’s admissions office had looked at his profile, Jack reported excitedly. “A few weeks after that,” said Katzman, “he received an offer of acceptance.”13

  While it’s impossible to know if the LinkedIn profile tipped the scale in Jack’s favor, Katzman’s second story convinced me that the time and effort reputation management takes is worth it.

  Reggie, an average high school student with modest SAT scores, had to help support his family, both financially and emotionally, throughout his high school years. When it was time to apply for college, he used the social media training he’d received from Social Assurity to share the many responsibilities he had to juggle. He applied to several colleges in and around the Atlanta area, knowing he couldn’t attend any of them unless he received substantial financial aid. Surprisingly, Reggie not only got accepted into one of his dream colleges, but he also received a generous scholarship offer. The only way to explain both, said his high school counselor, was his social media presence and what it revealed about his character and dedication to his family.

  “Learning how to build a reflective digital presence and developing effective social media networking techniques are essential life skills,” said Katzman.14 As they make their future plans, students must understand the important role this presence will play, in both college and job application processes. Like colleges, businesses often turn to social media to learn about prospective employees.

  EMPLOYERS ARE LOOKING, TOO

  According to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey, 70 percent of employers used social media to screen candidates before hiring them, a significant increase from 60 percent in 2016.15 Additionally, three in ten employers said they had hired someone dedicated solely to surveying applicants’ online presence.

  What are employers looking for? Among other things:

  •Sixty-one percent are seeking information that supports applicants’ job qualifications.

  •Thirty-seven percent want to know what other people are posting about the candidate.

  •Twenty-four percent are looking for any reason not to hire the candidate.

  Over 44 percent of employers found content on a social networking site that made them want to hire the candidate. But more than half found content that caused them not to hire a candidate. Strikingly, nearly 60 percent of employers reported being less likely to call someone in for an interview if they can’t find the person online.16

  CLEAN YOUR DIGITAL ROOM

  In the digital utopia I dream about, kids post only positive things online because they’ve had time and opportunity to learn how to use technology safely, wisely, and kindly. Then I wake up and remember how much work lies ahead to turn this dream into reality.

  But we are getting there, albeit slowly. Many kids realize that what they post online matters. That it stays online forever, and will possibly be seen by anyone and everyone, whenever and wherever. It may even come back to haunt them when they least expect it. Likewise, parents are learning they must help their children understand all this. Even so, kids will be kids. They will make mistakes, and many will go online before the hardware upstairs is ready to help them make the good decisions the online world requires.

  It’s imperative to talk to kids about their digital reputations, often and early. Many schools address this by inviting online safety experts to their campus. But often these “experts” either lecture kids or rely on scare tactics that either don’t work or backfire completely. Kids take to adults talking at them about their digital world like birds would take to dogs telling them how to fly. A better way to help kids understand the importance of maintaining a positive digital reputation is by letting them experience it from a different perspective.

  Years ago, I stumbled upon a lesson in one of those curricular guides Erin Reilly worked on when she was the research director of Henry Jenkins’s Project New Media Literacies at USC Annenberg. Their team had just partnered with Howard Gardner’s GoodPlay group at Harvard University to design a new curriculum called “Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World.” One of their lessons, Trillion-Dollar Footprint, challenged students to choose a contestant for a fictional television show based on the person’s digital footprint. That lesson subsequently ended up in Common Sense Media’s K–12 digital citizenship curriculum for schools (an excellent resource), where it was adapted for middle school. Taking inspiration from it, I changed it again, deciding to ask my students to pretend they are college admissions officers. I even let them decide what college they want to represent. Since we are in California, the ones that come to their minds include Stanford, UCLA, and Cal, some of the hardest in the state, and country, to get into. Next, the students peruse online content I have gathered (all made up, of course) about two fictional applicants and use that information to decide which candidate is most worthy of receiving the full scholarship they are awarding.

  They start by reading each student’s (fake) application letter. The candidates—one male and one female—describe themselves and tell of their high GPAs, excellent test scores, and numerous extracurricular activities. Both claim to be outstanding athletes. Since
it’s impossible to decide which one is more deserving based solely upon this self-reporting, students turn to each applicant’s (fake) “digital billboard” to learn more.

  Before this activity, students have already learned that a digital billboard is a collection of a person’s online activities—their digital reputation. While often referred to as a digital footprint, we call it a billboard for a couple of reasons. First, as students have pointed out to me, footprints are easily washed away. To them, a billboard seems more permanent. Second, anyone and everyone on the “information superhighway” can see a billboard. It advertises what kind of person you are.

  My students quickly discover that the content of each applicant’s digital billboard isn’t so stellar. The male applicant, Dave, a talented soccer player, posted a picture of himself toilet-papering a neighbor’s house and also posted a YouTube video of the escapade. Ouch. Plus, a newspaper article said he’d allegedly been caught hacking into his school’s computer to access a biology test. Furthermore, a club he said he belonged to posted on its Facebook page that he had been dropped for missing too many meetings.

  When the students turn their attention to the female applicant, Kate, a prospective English major in the school’s honor society, they discover her food blog is full of grammatical errors and misspelled words. On her Instagram feed, someone had accused her of using a photo that belonged to someone else. She appears scantily dressed in another social media post, and her name does not appear in the list of honor society members on the school’s website.

  My young students, most of whom are just starting to use social media themselves, judge these applicants harshly. Neither, they decide, is worthy of a scholarship.

  But there’s more to this lesson. After students make their decision, they must go back to take another look at each candidate’s digital trail. Upon closer inspection, they notice that the “Dave” who was accused of hacking was a different person from the “David” who had applied for the scholarship. It is not uncommon for two students at a large school to share a last name, I explain. Besides, had they studied the information I gave them more carefully, they would have noticed that the “Dave” in the article plays lacrosse, not soccer. Plus, I point out, the Facebook post that said he was being dropped from the club’s roster was several months old. Something else they had overlooked.