NASW Social Work Talks - EP23: Teens and Social Media

Episode Date: February 5, 2019

Sean Erreger, LCSW, MSW, is a clinical case manager for children and youth at the New York State Office of Mental Health. He believes that for social workers who work with teens, striving to understand the social media that their clients are using is part of cultural competency. For related resources, see the show notes

This is NASW Social Work Talks. Thanks for joining us. This is the second of a two-part series on how teens are using technology, specifically gaming and social media. In this episode, our host Greg Wright speaks with NASW member Sean Eriker. Sean Eriker is a clinical case manager for at-risk children and youth at the New York State Office of Mental Health. Sean has also become a highly regarded expert on social workers and social media. Here, he gives advice on how social workers can help young people and parents navigate social media ethically and safely. Now, here's Greg Wright with Sean Eriker. Welcome to Social Work Talk, Sean.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Sean, you are an active blogger and you're also on Twitter a lot. How did you get so involved with social media? Kind of fell into it by accident. pitching a book at the time this was about four or five years ago one of the editors that I was working with suggest you should develop some sort of web presence blog and a little bit of social media in that process I really got interested in social media and how it works and mostly on the kind of

peer-to-peer side social work peer-to-peer and with other professionals Because along the same time at the day job working at case management, there was this emphasis on integrating physical health and behavioral health. So I started looking at tools to do that, networking with folks on social media and the health care space and the health IT space, Just kind of realizing the value of learning from other disciplines like that, learning from other social workers about technology and social media, learning from other disciplines, people who are working on technological ethics issues like social media ethics. There's just such a sense of community around Twitter, around hashtags, LinkedIn groups, such powerful ways for professionals to kind of join together. You've done a lot of work on how social media influences younger people. This seemed to have started about a year and a half, two years ago.

People started asking questions, trying to kind of quantify and measure the impact. social media was having on youth. And then of course with my day job working with with at-risk youth, certainly engaging in conversations with them about social media in their lives. I mean you can't really go, not a week goes by where social media doesn't come up in conversation in sessions. So I started to look at the research that is kind of teasing this out a little bit. The biggest question was Instagram and in terms of how it affects the image and how people view who they're supposed to be what they're supposed to look like

things like that and they started talking to kids about it but also kind of looking at the research and there were that you know there's there was a fair amount of research to suggest that there there is credence to that that kids look at Instagram or young adults to look at an Instagram and kind of start comparing themselves to celebrities and holding themselves up to those kind of standards. And that was having a negative impact on people in terms of time spent on social media and kind of was that causing isolation. There's kind of like some debate about that, whether or not there's some sort of uh causal effect between uh social media and depression and mood it certainly impacts your mood

uh and it's certainly some of the research kind of teases that out a little bit that yeah it does have a negative effect on on mood and i think it does i think it did have some sort of more negative impact on on females in terms of eating disorders but it's not all terrible you know yes there are some negative effects but also some semi-decent things come out of social media use as well. But it's not all terrible. Yes, there are some negative effects, but also some semi-decent things come out of social media use as well. On the positive side of that, if you look at Instagram, if you look at their safety and community standards, these companies are starting to think about this a little bit more and how they can respond to things and provide education.

And I know that's one step that Instagram has taken, was to make accessible eating disorder education and resources available to youth and parents. In terms of youth, is there a way for youth to connect on social media in a positive way? And unfortunately, there wasn't too much resource. In the presentation I did, I think there was one study that referenced that there was some sort of discrepancy between how they felt connected with each other. But then that sort of made them feel a little bit disconnected from their parents as well, which was kind of interesting. You know, I guess from the social work perspective, I think there are two things that we can look at. we can look at social media as kind of an issue of cultural competency. Should, as social workers, is there an obligation for us to know what the norms and

rules are for social media platforms? The other issue is in terms of empowerment and choice, is it something we should be educating youth on as a positive thing to connect with peers in social media to feel like they're not alone and I think that that's that's another thing that that social work needs to kind of consider when we're thinking about these platforms that that there can be risks but there could also be protective factors as well and kind of balancing that out a little bit yes so in other words you are recommending that all social workers should have a basic knowledge

about social media platforms? Yeah, I think so. To give an example, this kid was sending abusive messages to my client on this social media platform called Kik. And I'm like, I don't know what it is. So I felt compelled to research and try to understand it a little bit more. But also, I asked my client, we should

be aware of some of the the norms and rules so to speak on the professional side like I know that how I post things and interact with other professionals on Twitter is a little bit different from how I post things and interact with other professionals and other disciplines on LinkedIn you know that there are certain rules and norms like you know that are different between the platforms and we should be kind of familiarizing ourselves a little bit with the kind of rules and norms of platforms you work with a lot of young people is there basic advice that you give them on how to behave on social

media yeah I mean I say the biggest thing that I say is that that what you put on there is forever so to speak for those are familiar with snapchat things just kind of show up on your snapchat stories but even though it disappears in seven seconds, somebody can take a screenshot just to kind of get kids to kind of think about what, think about what you're posting about and how it could affect you and how it could affect other people as well. Not only in the short term, but potentially in the long term, but also knowing that good things can come out of it as well. To kind of go the other way too, to know that, you know, if somebody is bullying you, you can take screenshots of things, can print out things,

bring them to your guidance counselor, have a discussion, bring them to session so that I could, if it gets enough, I know that there's certain ways that we can access law enforcement in New York State if bullying becomes that pervasive, because it is a pretty complex issue, but I think that as long as we're teaching kids to be kind of mindful about what they post and how it can be potentially empowering for them, we'll be doing them a service. Should a parent monitor what a child does on social media? There are a few platforms out there, actually, where parents can monitor for certain things. What I would suggest is, you know, similar to family meeting, have family meeting around social media.

Talk about any safety concerns, any concerns that you're having about it. They might just grumble and say, no, no, there's no problems. But at least to ask the questions, check in, show them that that that latest article you see on the news about Instagram being negative and talk to your child about it. I would say same thing with with in social work practice to be able to have a conversation with the kids that you work with about their perception of this stuff that's coming out. We'll keep it platform agnostic and say that there are social media platforms where parents and children can sit down together and choose the keywords within social media and texts that they want to be alerted to. Which one is that, Sean? Okay. There's one called Bark, which is just Bark.us.

Parents and children can kind of sit down and pick the keywords that they want to be alerted to. They can agree that if somebody in a social media post or a text mentions the word suicide, that an alert would be sent to the parent, like that kind of thing. But what I liked about it was there was this co-decision-making piece. I thought that was pretty powerful, though, that parents and children can kind of sit down and work together about, you know, what words they think they should be worried about on social media. And then there's other kind of automatic alerts about inappropriate content. Surveillance with the opportunity for discussion, I think, is the key. NASW put out a revised code of ethics recently and it included some technology areas to it

I was wondering from like you as a member and also as an observer were those like adequate or should the code of ethics go further I think that they cover the issues well I think that what more that I felt was missing from the social media piece was the tech standards and ethical standards mentioned the need for a social media policy but didn't really give a whole lot of guidance in terms of how to build one and I think that that's important social that social workers be able to understand kind of these these ethical problems that may arise professionally you know And I didn't really go back and look at it from the lens of the clinical side a little bit, too. I was mostly, again, looking at it from that lens of professional and professional conversations.

But, yeah, I think it was pretty good in terms of covering the social media concerns that may arise. You know, there's probably stuff in this that you can write in a standard, the way technology is moving so fast, that you can write in a standard one year. And then next year it could be totally obsolete because this new thing has come out and this new way of having a conversation on social media has come out. The other advice that I would give for parents and other professionals about this technology, I mentioned Instagram has their safety and community standards. But to look at Facebook's safety and community standards and kind of familiarize yourself with those things. We're wondering if you can give us some specific suggestions of where social workers can go to in order to learn more about social media and how young people are using social media today. yeah sure uh yeah so like i said before a good a good place to to look if if you're looking for platform specific questions is to look at those those uh safety and and community standards

uh the other uh resources that i would suggest commonsensemedia.org the national pta pta.org They have a digital safety section for parents. In terms of youth, there's one checklist that I found that's helpful that I've used to just engage in a conversation with youth about social media use. Are there any social media sites that are actually better at doing that that you found? I know that Facebook and Facebook groups based on specific problems can be helpful. I know that there's one, Team Aspire, which is a peer-to-peer community for various healthcare diagnoses. they've built a kind of mini social media platform I think there's a lot of organizations kind of thinking about how they can provide specific resources I

know that I mentioned the LGBT community as well they for youth there's the the Trevor project they have a lot of educational material try to make that accessible for youth and also so that they can kind of drive conversation about it as well. Now a lot of bullying happens online and are there things that a social worker can do to address that and also are there resources out there for social workers if they need some guidance on how to address bullying happening with a client. Yeah, and I think it varies. I mentioned this before. I think it's very state-to-state. You have to check with your jurisdiction in terms of what laws are

and what recourse you can take. I know that in New York State, where I practice, where I know we're able to if a youth brings screenshots of their of their you know if somebody's bullying them online and it's consistent enough and is able to kind of like timestamp and they're able to kind of track who it is I know we can bring that information to law enforcement and that was based on a law that's kind of driven by the the schools here in New York State I would kind of check with local jurisdictions schools to see what your laws are in terms of what kind of recourse you get if a client is being bullied online and it's

that persistent you had earlier said that you were working on a book like I said I have the the training on my website which is which is stuck on on socialwork.com, hopefully launching soon to have two hours of CEUs for social media ethics for social workers. Sean, we thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at

www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.