Cyberparenting Forum to Offer Tips

If you add up the impact of Facebook, Twitter, Formspring and other social media sites and combine their influence on more than 10,000 students, how many problems will surface?

Plenty.

It's the kind of story problem Plymouth-Canton Community School officials want to solve. The district is organizing a series of joint programs with libraries and police departments in Plymouth and Canton.

The first program is a cyberparenting forum, to be hosted by Canton Public Library, 1200 S. Canton Center Rd., at 7 p.m. Wednesday. No registration is required.

The event will offer parents tech tips, advice on monitoring children’s online activities and guidelines on when authorities should be called if a situation gets out of hand.

“It’s a communitywide problem,” said Laurie Golden, Canton Public Library spokeswoman. “The whole community needs to be part of solving it.”

She said the library program was organized quickly but already four students have volunteered to be part of the panel discussion, along with Erin MacGregor, Plymouth High School’s associate principal; Will Burgess, a GrowthWorks counselor who has made presentations on social media safety for Van Buren Public schools; Sara Boritzki, Canton Township Police Department’s school resource officer; and Ellen Pare, Canton Library’s adult services librarian (and mother of two teens). Moderators include Golden, a mother of three, including a Plymouth-Canton freshman, and Frank Ruggirello Jr., Plymouth-Canton Community Schools spokesman and the father of two.

“I’ve been with the school district for nine years, and in the last year alone I’ve seen more problems related to social media than in all the eight previous years,” Ruggirello said.

The district has about 18,000 students enrolled, and Ruggirello says it's a myth that problems happen only among older students.

“Don’t think you’re not having issues with fourth- and fifth-graders. They have Facebook pages, too,” Ruggirello said.

Students can unwittingly share information online with predators and stalkers that could put them and their families at risk. But they can also lead to cyberbullying and other forms of harassment. Wednesday’s forum will address all aspects of social media, Golden and Ruggirello said.

Wednesday's forum comes just one year after Jacob Fuller, then 14, was beaten during a school fight with another student, Vince Ryckman. Fuller’s injuries included a broken hip. The fight started online and escalated, according to multiple reports. Ryckman no longer attends Plymouth-Canton schools. Canton police have been called to deal with unrelated threats posted by students online.

Sometimes, Ruggirello said, children make comments without realizing that, because so much of what happens online is public, such comments can be perceived as threats, regardless if they are written in jest.

"I don’t think students always understand the ramifications, that if you say something and you don’t mean it, that’s one thing," Ruggirello said. "But when you put it in writing and it’s out there online, that’s a whole different thing. … We have to check out everything as if it’s real.”

Susan Stoney, community relations specialist for Plymouth District Library, said she is working with the school district for a second forum.

“We did hold a program in conjunction with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department last year,” she said, adding that many such forums are needed because some parents think, “’I would never need that’ and six months later, you do.”

Stoney said many parents don’t realize the scope and number of social media websites.