We're wandering into slippery slope territory here. If, as Lori Andrews argues, schools and other institutions were prohibited from accessing social network pages, what would be some of the unintended consequences?
The first one that comes to mind is cyberbullying. We are already seeing school administration turning a blind eye (in some, not all, cases) to bullying that happens over social media. Do we really want to codify and legitimize such a stance? On the other hand, is it the school's responsibility to play Big Brother to its students?
I say yes, but no. Schools should not actively monitor every student's online activity - Google and other services do that enough already. However, they should be required to act if given probable cause. I know that is a wishy washy term, but what I mean is, if administration has a reason to believe that cyberbullying is occuring, they have a responsibility to treat such claims with all possible severity until the truth of the matter is resolved.
We seem to have a culture of silence in America that I neither understand nor endorse. Nobody wants to talk about what's done in the dark because of "reputation" or "political correctness." And this goes beyond cyberbullying, too. Just look at the recent case of the Stanford rapist to see what I'm talking about.
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