Loyola Catholic School hosts a panel for parents tonight to help youth make better choices when it comes to social media.
While social media continues to grow in popularity among our society, the staff at Loyola want to make sure parents are informed on the different social media sites that are available for their child to use.
Activities Director, John Landkamer says, "I would highly suggest to all you parents that if you're son or daughter has a twitter account and if they do, I would look at it."
While there are many benefits to social media like networking and connecting with friends one thing that students may not understand is that the web is forever.
Jessica Kirschner says, "Once it's out there, it's there for good. And whether it's true or not it's irrelevant. People are going to see it and run with it and unfortunately that's some of the major downfalls of the social media and the effects we are seeing in school."
According to ETCB Organization an anti-bullying group online over 95 percent of teenagers use social networking sties to communicate with peers and 85 percent of them have been cyber bullied at least once.
Annie Nawrocki says, "It's hard to tell if people are kidding and half the time people aren't intentionally trying to be mean but it can be interpreted that way."
Annie Nawrocki and Logan Goettl are student representatives from Project for Teens which is a group that promotes health decision-making.
They say when you post something on Twitter or Facebook you're not only representing yourself but also your family and school.
Logan Goettl and Annie Nawrocki says, "Making sure you set an example. I want people to see it's not all a negative thing there can be some positive aspects but everything in moderation."
A fast and efficient way to communicate with peers. A warning though, just take an extra second to think before hitting post.
