social media should be blocked at workplace essay

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Pros and cons of banning social media use at work.

Updated: May 25, 2016

Pros to Banning Social Media Use at Work

• Reducing social media use can help stem (but not eliminate) the risk of employees using social media as a forum for discrimination or harassment.
• Banning social media while at work theoretically could stem the lost productivity that comes with excessive time spent online by employees. Many of us know first-hand how quickly time seems to slip away when you get caught up in a social media interaction or in scrolling your news feed.
• Social media is yet another potential place for confidential information to be leaked. By banning it, that reduces risk.
• Social media can be a source of other risks, such as computer viruses that come via links on social media sites. Allowing access increases the risk of an employee infecting a work computer with a virus.

Cons to Banning Social Media Use at Work

• Employees may still have social media access on their smartphones, so instituting a ban on social media use on work devices—even if that ban is backed up by blocking specific URLs—may prove futile since employees may have ways around it. Even with these steps in place, the sites may not be truly blocked on the work devices because of the plethora of apps that can be used to access social media accounts without ever opening the social media page itself.
• It can be argued that work breaks—more and more often taken in the form of looking at personal sites or social media sites—may actually make employees more productive. If work breaks are crucial to productivity, it’s possible that social media use during breaks may also be a net benefit as long as it is not abused.
• Employee morale may suffer if the workplace is seen as being too restrictive. A ban, especially if accompanied by the blocking of social media sites, tells employees that you do not trust them to monitor their own time and productivity.
• Disallowing social media at work can take away important opportunities for employees to promote the organization and network in ways that can help the company. Social media also acts as a way for the employee to grow their network and stay connected in the industry—which could help the organization.
• It can be a way to reach out to clients who are also on social media. As such, taking this away during the workday can have unanticipated negative effects.
• An overly-strict social media policy may be a detractor for would-be job applicants.

Another Note: Don’t Let Social Media Restrictions Go Too Far

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i like this a lot, can you make a new article about grounds for termination + social media but only for pro

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• Social Media and the Workplace

New platforms can be tools for connection with colleagues and outside experts, but can also serve as distractions while on the job

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Social media influences and permeates many aspects of daily life for Americans today, and the workforce is no exception. These digital platforms offer the potential to enhance worker productivity by fostering connections with colleagues and resources around the globe. At the same time, employers might worry that employees are using these tools for non-work purposes while on the job or engaging in speech in public venues that might reflect poorly on their organization.

A Pew Research Center survey of 2,003 American adults (including 795 who are currently employed on a full- or part-time basis) conducted Sept. 11-14 and 18-21, 2014, finds that social media plays some role in the lives of many American workers – but that role is not always clear-cut or entirely positive. 1

Workers turn to social media for a range of reasons while at work, with taking a mental break being among the most common

Today’s workers incorporate social media into a wide range of activities while on the job. Some of these activities are explicitly professional or job-related, while others are more personal in nature. The survey asked Americans who are employed full- or part-time about eight different ways they might use social media while on the job and found that:

• 34% ever use social media while at work to take a mental break from their job
• 27% to connect with friends and family while at work
• 24% to make or support professional connections
• 20% to get information that helps them solve problems at work
• 17% to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers
• 17% to learn about someone they work with
• 12% to ask work-related questions of people outside their organization
• 12% to ask such questions of people inside their organization

As noted above, 17% of workers say they use social media to build or strengthen personal relationships at work – but the transparency that social media facilitates comes with costs as well as benefits. Some 14% of workers have found information on social media that has improved their professional opinion of a colleague; at the same time, a similar share (16%) have found information on social media that has lowered their professional opinion of a colleague.

Younger workers are more likely than their older counterparts to say they have discovered information about a colleague on social media that lowered their professional opinion of them – but also are more likely than older workers to have found information that improved their professional opinion of a colleague.

Some 23% of workers ages 18 to 29 report that they have discovered information on social media that improved their professional opinion of a colleague. By comparison, just 12% of workers ages 30 to 49 and 9% of workers ages 50 to 64 have experienced this. Similarly, 29% of these younger workers have discovered information that lowered their professional opinion of a colleague: 16% of those ages 30 to 49 and 6% of those ages 50 to 64 indicate that this has happened to them.

Many employers have rules for how employees use social media at work

Many workers report that their employers have policies about social media use on the job, or about how employees may present themselves in various online spaces. Half of all full-time and part-time workers (51%) say their workplace has rules about using social media while at work (45% say their employer does not have these policies), while 32% report that their employer has policies about how employees may present themselves on the internet in general (63% say their employer does not have these policies).

Policies that regulate how employers present themselves online outside of work may be expected to influence whether these workers use social media at all. However, this does not seem to be the case: Fully 77% of workers report using social media regardless of whether their employer has such a policy in place.

At the same time, there is some evidence that workplace policies concerning social media use while on the job may have an effect. Workers whose companies have policies regulating social media use at work are less likely to use social media in certain ways:

• 30% of workers whose companies have an at-work social media policy say they use social media while on the job to take a break from work, compared with 40% of workers whose employers do not have such policies.
• 20% of workers whose employers have at-work social media policies say they use social media to stay connected to family and friends while on the job, compared with 35% of workers whose social media use is not regulated at work.
• Only 16% of workers whose companies regulate social media at work say they use social media while working to get information that’s helpful to their job, compared with 25% of those whose workplaces have no such regulations.

On the other hand, workers are equally likely to say they use social media for a range of purposes regardless of their workplace policy, including:

• Making or supporting professional contacts that help them do their job
• Learning more about someone they work with
• Building or strengthening personal relationships with coworkers
• Asking work-related questions of people outside their organization
• Asking work-related questions of people inside their organization

Relatively few workers use specific social media platforms for work-related purposes, and the impact of that use is not always clear-cut

A relatively modest share of workers say they have incorporated specific social media platforms into their day-to-day work lives:

• 19% of workers say they ever use Facebook for work-related purposes.
• 14% ever use LinkedIn for work-related purposes.
• 3% ever use Twitter for work-related purposes.
• 9% use a social media tool provided by their employer for work-related purposes.
• 5% use social media platforms other than the ones listed above for work-related purposes.

But among the group that answered yes to at least one of the items above – that is, the subset of workers who use at least one social media tool for job-related purposes – large shares see certain positive or beneficial impacts on their job performance:

• 78% of workers who use social media platforms for work-related purposes say social media is useful for networking or finding new job opportunities.
• 71% of these workers say social media is useful for staying in touch with others in their field.
• 56% say it is useful for connecting with experts.
• 51% say it is useful for getting to know their co-workers on a personal basis.
• 46% say it is useful for finding information they need to do their job.

On the other hand, these workers are divided on the utility of social media in other respects, especially when it comes to the impact of social media use on their own job performance:

• 56% of workers who use social media platforms for work-related purposes agree that social media distracts from the work they need to do , with 30% agreeing strongly. Some 42% of these workers disagree that social media is a distraction.
• 54% of these workers agree that social media breaks help them recharge at work . A statistically similar proportion (46%) disagree that social media breaks help them recharge while on the job.
• 51% of these workers agree that social media use at work lets them see too much information about their coworkers ; 47% disagree with this statement.

In the end, a majority (56%) of these workers believe that using social media ultimately helps their job performance. One-in-five (22%) believe that it mostly hurts, 16% feel that it doesn’t have much impact either way and 4% see both the benefits and the drawbacks.

One-quarter of workers report that they never use the internet for work-related tasks in the course of a typical day

Even as the internet has embedded itself in numerous aspects of American life, many of today’s workers make only marginal use of the internet for accomplishing work-related tasks. Indeed, some 17% of workers report that they “hardly ever” use the internet on a typical day for work-related tasks, while 25% report that they “never” use the internet for this reason.

• Social media users are defined as workers who said they use one of the five major social media sites studied here, see the topline for the full list. ↩

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Social Media in the Workplace: Everything You Need to Know

Spoiler alert: social media in the workplace is here to stay. 

In fact, 8 in 10 workers say they use social media at work.  

And 98% of employees use social media for personal use, with 50% already posting about their company online.

If you think those numbers are high - social media might become even more pervasive in the workplace. 

In 2016, millennials became the largest generation in the workforce . This generation of digital natives and heavy social media users continues to grow.

Post-millennial generations - arguably even more digitally “native” than millennials - have also started entering the workforce in meaningful numbers.

How is social media used in the workplace?

It varies from company to company, but there are definitely some common themes. 

We’ll break down social media use in the workplace from three main perspectives:

• Technology - what technologies represent social media use at work?
• Function - what functions are leveraging social media in the workplace?
• Employees - how are employees actually using social media at work?

Curious how social media entered the workplace in the first place? Check out a quick recap of the history of social media since the 2000s. Otherwise, skip ahead.

A (Very) Brief History of Social Media

Social media in the workplace, by technology

The constant evolution of technology has led to a variety of social media tools in the workplace.

Here are some of the most common:

Traditional Social Media Platforms and Networking Sites. Examples include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Typically, these are used by both the company in an official capacity (i.e. to represent the brand online), but also by employees for personal use.

Video & Photo Sharing Sites. Here you have YouTube, Flickr, even Instagram and TikTok. (These technologies sometimes fall in multiple categories.) As with more traditional platforms, there is often official company use and also personal employee use.

Messaging Platforms. Think Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat. For many users around the world, they have fully replaced traditional SMS messaging.

Blogs, Online Forums, Message Boards. Popular examples include Quora, Reddit, and more niche industry-specific sites like Stack Overflow (for software development).

Internal Messaging Systems. Here we get further inside the enterprise with collaboration and productivity software like Slack and Microsoft’s Teams. These typically include chat/messaging functionality, and have a focus on getting work done so file sharing is a must.

Employee Advocacy Tools. Examples include Swaybase (writers of this article) and LinkedIn Elevate. These tools enable companies to communicate with their employees for announcements, news, and other interesting content. Employees can then share that content with their personal networks to drive word-of-mouth for the company. Less noisy and more outward-facing / social than chat software like Slack, these tools help bridge the gap between the inside of your organization and the outside world - namely via your employees trusted (and vast) personal networks.

Blogs. Blog posts, especially when syndicated and/or found via social media or search engines, are social in nature. Add blog post comments to the mix, and you can see how they can drive online discussion.

Knowledge Centers / Wikis / Communities of Practices. These often custom repositories of knowledge and expertise are crowdsourced internally by employees. They contribute their knowledge, method, or case study, and colleagues can enjoy the benefit of previous experience instead of starting from scratch on their projects.

Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive - there are variations on nearly all of these categories.

But that covers the most common social media tools seen in the workplace.

Social media in the workplace, by function

Technology is just one piece of the puzzle with social media at work.

Equally important is the functional use of social media.

That is, which function or department is using it at work, and how are they using it?

Here are the major players:

Marketing. Unsurprisingly, marketing is one of the key owners of a company’s more traditional social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Their objective with social media is to drive awareness, interest, and ultimately a purchase, all while using a consistent brand voice in their marketing materials. However, they have an increasingly difficult problem to solve: how to get around organic reach and engagement that’s steadily declining for brands . If companies have the budget, they may pay to have their posts be seen by their followers - but even that option has its issues, since consumers don’t believe ads . That’s why many marketing teams bypass these issues altogether with another form of social media in the workplace covered above: employee advocacy . That is, having their employees serve as brand ambassadors for the company on their personal social media accounts.

Communications / PR. Traditionally, this function relies on social media to make announcements about the company, to monitor sentiment and what’s being said, and to respond to public relations crises. In recent years, however, comms has become an even more strategic piece of the business; through the use of internal comms tools, they can help foster a stronger connection between a company and its employees, the most important piece of internal marketing . This can result in a number of benefits, including increased employee satisfaction and engagement, greater brand reach, more trusted marketing, and improved recruiting and employer brand.

HR. We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of HR practitioners who use social media at work. Specifically, recruiters are looking to diversity the content they post on social media so that it isn’t just job postings. And it makes a lot of sense. Many recruiters have connected with thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of candidates online. When recruiters share interesting content about their company and industry, the candidates in the recruiters’ networks will see that content, keeping that company top of mind.

Customer Support. By now there’s a good chance you’ve interacted with a company’s customer support team via social media. For instance, American Airlines has an incredibly active social media team that seemingly responds to every social media mention. This type of social media use enables business-to-consumer (and many business-to-business) companies to address most issues in real time, limiting customer frustration and avoiding long wait times on the phone.

Sales. With 4 out of 5 social sellers outselling colleagues who don't use social media, sales and social media are a natural fit. Salespeople use social media at work to share interesting content with their networks, helping to position them as subject matter experts and stay top of mind with prospects.

Learning & Development. We mentioned above some of the internal social tools that teams use to share knowledge. Teams in charge of the learning and development function within a company usually leverage these technologies to centralize courses, training materials, shared documents, and more. As with external-facing technology, internal tech usually provides statistics around employee usage and engagement so that L&D teams can track if they’re meeting their goals.

Social media in the workplace, employee perspective

Finally, it’s equally important to ask employees themselves - why do you use social media at work?

Here’s what employees say about their social media use at work:

• 34% to take a break from work
• 27% to connect with friends/family
• 24% to make/support professional connections
• 20% to get info that helps them solve problems at work
• 17% to build/strengthen relationships with coworkers
• 17% to learn about a colleague
• 12% to ask work-related questions of people external to their organization
• 12% to ask work-related questions of colleagues

Clearly, employees use social media at work for a variety of reasons.

What’s striking is how much of that use is personal and professional.

Which leads to the question: should we allow social media use at work?

Should social media be allowed in the workplace? Or should you block access to social media?

In the early days of social media, this was a valid question. The technology was new, and its use was not as widespread as it is today.

But nowadays, social media use at work is simply a given.

We’ve already established that 8 in 10 employees use social media at work - often through their personal phones. And that’s regardless of whether the company has a social media policy in place.

We’ve also established that there are multiple uses for social media that directly tie back to the business, such as chat and knowledge sharing.

So to block social media at work is, in this day and age, very unlikely to be the right answer for your business.

In fact, it’s probably impossible to pull off.

So the real question is: how can you best harness social media in the workplace?

To answer that, let’s first look at pros and cons.

That way, we can devise an approach that accentuates the pros, and minimizes the cons.

What are the pros and cons of using social media at work?

Rather than turn our backs on social media in the workplace, let’s get even smarter about it.

Let’s look at each of the pros and cons associated with it at work.

We can then be strategic about how to harness social media use in the workplace, so that we’re maximizing the benefit for the business.

Pros of social media in the workplace

Communications & Networking

First and foremost, social media is a communication and networking tool.

It’s no surprise then that 82% of employees say social media can improve work relationships and 60% say it can support decision-making processes .

Furthermore, employees who use social media for work (3 out of every 4 employees) stated the following benefits :

• 71% - staying in touch with others in the same field
• 56% - connecting with experts
• 51% - getting to know co-workers on a personal level

Social media in the workplace can actually increase employee engagement.

This phenomenon has been seen time and again in studies.

For instance, 54% of employees who use social media for work say that social media helps them recharge at work.

Furthermore, employees who interact with coworkers online via social media blogs are more motivated and come up with innovative ideas .

And while it goes without saying, the many follow-on benefits of employee engagement include higher productivity, happier customers, and reduced turnover.

Brand Recognition

Outside your company, you have two particular kinds of people you want to attract: buyers and talent.

You may have one but not the other - for instance, there are countless B2B companies that have great brand recognition among potential customers, but very little to no recognition among potential candidates.

Worse yet, you may be weak in both areas.

Regardless, one of the best ways we’ve seen companies quickly build awareness in both areas is through word of mouth.

And one of the best word of mouth engines is a company’s own employee base.

That’s because a company’s employees have connections. And lots of them.

In Swaybase’s work with companies of all sizes, we often see multi-billion dollar corporations whose employee bases have hundreds of times more social media followers, collectively, than the company itself.

By embracing social media in the workplace, these companies open the door for their employees to speak on behalf of the company to their massive (and as mentioned earlier in this post, trusted ) personal networks.

The result is almost always a stronger employer brand and consumer brand.

Cons of social media in the workplace

As we noted earlier, employees are already using social media at work.

So the question to keep in mind when reviewing the potential cons is: how can a company minimize these cons given that employees already use social media at work?

Let’s now review the cons. Then in the final section we’ll lay out a plan that will ensure you double down on the benefits while minimizing the downsides.

Distraction

As you’ve likely experienced yourself, it’s easy to get distracted when using social media.

Of course, the business models of social networks rely on that distraction. The more time you spend on social media, the more money-making ads these social networks can show you.

But that doesn’t mean your employees need to get lost perusing social media.

In fact, with a little bit of planning and some smart tactics (which we’ll share below), you can help focus your employees’ attention and drastically limit the odds that they drift off into the social media ether.

Employee Turnover

While employees who use social media at work are more engaged, they are also more likely to leave for another company . This is typically because they make new connections and come across new organizations.

Of course, as we’ve said all along, this behavior is likely already happening. So it’s not really about whether to allow social media at work.

The real question is: what do you do about this phenomenon?

And regarding social media and employee turnover, there are two points to keep in mind.

First, you can realign employees’ social networking attention to be more collaborative with colleagues and internal-facing, reducing the risk of turnover.

Second, other companies are also facing the risk of employee turnover through social media use - which represents an employer branding and recruiting opportunity for you.

We’ll now tell you exactly how you can capitalize on both of those points.

The right way to harness social media in the workplace

We’ve established that social media is a powerful tool at work, leading to engagement and productivity.

We also know that it’s a moot point - social media is already in the workplace, whether company leaders like it or not. Your employees are using it every day.

So the question is how to best harness social media at work.

Here are the three steps you need to implement to fully utilize the power of social media in the workplace.

Step 1: Use Internal Marketing to Solidify Your Employees’ Support

For successful use of social media at work, you need to start with the basics.

In this case, that’s an employee base that supports your company and is generally engaged at work.

Sure, your employees may work for your company. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you automatically have their full support.

So how do you get that support?

Just like any consumer, your employees need to be convinced of the product. In this case, the product is your mission, vision, and culture.

The very best companies are deliberate about convincing their employees, through what’s called internal marketing .

Internal marketing is the promotion of your company’s vision, mission, and culture to your employees with the objective of gaining their support.

There’s a good chance your company is already doing some internal marketing. Some common tactics include:

• Consistent communication of company’s mission, vision, & values
• Having a strong, clear company strategy in place
• Seeking & acting on employee feedback
• Centralized communication
• Company-wide brainstorming for new products/services
• Using your own product/service
• ...and much more

Step 2: Develop the Right Social Media Policy for Your Company

With a supportive and engaged employee base, you can focus your attention on social media.

Specifically, you’ll need to ensure your social media policy is right for your company.

For example, you’ll want to make sure that your social media policy describes:

• Roles on social media, including who can officially speak on behalf of the company and who can’t
• What is, and is not, acceptable conduct and content
• Regulations, legal requirements, and the handling of sensitive information, especially in heavily regulated industries
• Procedures for handling conflicts or crises
• How your employees can participate in spreading the word about the company and why they enjoy working for you

The good thing is, even if you don’t have an official social media policy, you don’t need to start from scratch.

There are plenty of good social media policy examples to learn from, and free templates you can use right away.

Step 3: Embrace Employee Advocacy

You’ve got your employees’ support and engagement.

You’ve also got a solid social media policy to guide their social media use.

Now it’s time to take full advantage of social media in the workplace by embracing employee advocacy .

With employee advocacy, your employees serve as your ambassador on their own personal social media accounts.

By actively participating as social media ambassadors, your employees will build their personal brand, help the company recruit top talent, and drive the company’s sales and marketing activities.

With employee advocacy, you’ll empower your employees to share:

• why they enjoy working for you
• how they feel supported by their manager or mentor
• the latest experience they had with a customer who shared how your product or service impacted their life
• the latest company news and developments
• and anything else that helps set your company apart from the crowd.

And with a dedicated employee advocacy program and technology, you can make it foolproof for your employees by providing them with pre-approved content in one central location. They can then share that content with their personal social networks with the click of a button.

Hopefully you’ve seen how a seemingly complicated topic like social media in the workplace can actually be simplified and turned to your advantage.

Just by reframing the question.

Because it’s not about if your employees should be using social media at work.

We know they already are.

It’s about how you can leverage that activity for the benefit of the business and your employees.

With that mindset, and with a few practical steps, you’ll take full advantage of the opportunity that social media in the workplace represents.

Continue Reading

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How to Manage the Use of Social Media in the Workplace

With a staggering 4.8 billion users worldwide, social media has become an omnipresent force, shaping the way individuals connect, share, and engage in the digital era.

But should you be encouraging social media use at work, or is workplace use of social media nothing more than an unwanted distraction?

In this article I will outline the risks and benefits of social media in the workplace, the best practices for managing social media use at work, and provide you with a social media policy example that you can use in your organization. 

Get Your FREE Workplace Social Media Policy Template

• Productivity and security tips for using social media in the workplace
• Guidelines for representing the organization on social media channels
• Acceptable vs unacceptable use of social media at work

Get started today— Download the FREE template and customize it to fit the needs of your organization.

Should Employees Be Allowed To Access Social Media Platforms While Working?

When it comes to managing social media in the workplace many employers are conflicted between embracing social media as an employee engagement tool and blocking social media in the workplace in search of increased productivity and security.

A Pew Research Center survey found that while social media platforms can be tools for connection with colleagues and outside experts, they can also serve as distractions while on the job. 

According to their research, here’s why employees use social media in the workplace:

• 34% to take a mental break from their job
• 27% to connect with friends and family while at work
• 24% to make or support professional connections
• 20% to get information that helps them solve problems at work
• 17% to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers
• 17% to learn about someone they work with
• 12% to ask work-related questions of people outside their organization
• 12% to ask such questions of people inside their organization

This section will outline the pros and cons of social media in the workplace so you can decide whether you want to block social media in the workplace or consider leveraging social media for its business benefits.

The Risks Of Social Media in the Workplace

When your organization is planning how to manage the use of social media in the workplace it’s essential to be aware of the potential risks to its brand, sensitive data, employee wellbeing, and productivity.

According to a 2013 survey from Grant Thorton , 71% of executives said their company was concerned about possible risks posed by social media and 13% were very concerned. These concerns ranged from negative comments about the company, exposure of personal information and intellectual property, and fraud.

This section will outline the key risks of social media at work so you can plan around them.

Data Security Risks

As with any website where files and information can be freely shared, social media blogs and platforms pose a data security risk. 

Allowing employees to freely browse internet forums without proper data protection measures in place increases the risks that social media plays a part in your next data breach. 

If you will allow the use of social media platforms in the workplace, you must provide training materials such as information security policies and social media in the workplace policies; such policies are essential for the optimal use of social media at work.

Learn More: What is Data Leakage? How Can I Prevent Data Leaks?

Employee Engagement and Productivity

Employers typically worry that social media is a productivity killer, but social media doesn’t reduce productivity nearly as much as it kills employee retention. Employees using social media for work are more often exposed to other job opportunities and have higher profiles among recruiters, making them potential targets for poaching. – Lorenzo Bizzi , Harvard Business Review

As noted in the Pew survey, 34% of employees browse social networks while on the clock to take a mental break from their job. While there are benefits to taking short breaks (more on that later), at the same time social networking sites can be a major workplace distraction.

In fact, a Salary.com survey found that 64% of employees engage in cyberloafing—the act of browsing non-work websites during work hours—every day at work.  

Out of those employees, 39% said they wasted up to an hour on the Internet at work, 29% wasted 1-2 hours, and 32% wasted more than 2 hours per day.

Depending on how disengaged the employee is they could be seeking job opportunities with new organizations while on the clock or simply doing the bare minimum and spending most of their time browsing the web.

While it’s natural to want to trust your employees to manage their time effectively, it’s important to have an employee internet management system in place to address anyone that’s dedicating too much time to their social media presence at work.

Company Reputation

While social networks are a great tool to share ideas and engage with fellow social media users, mismanaged social media use can reflect poorly on the company. 

From an internal optics perspective, new employees seeing their co workers engage in excessive personal social media use can give the impression that surfing the web rather than working is an accepted practice. 

From a public relations perspective any defamatory comments made by an employee can negatively reflect on the organization, especially if employer branding is directly tied to their account.

The Benefits Of Social Media For Employees & Employers

Now that you’re aware of the potential negative impact that social media platforms can have in the workplace, it’s time to cover the benefits of social media at work.

While the simplest approach would be to simply block social media for everyone that’s not in your marketing department , at the same time there are legitimate reasons why you might want to allow your employees to use social media.

This section will outline the benefits of social media for your organization so you can decide how you’d like to leverage social media at work to improve working relationships, encourage employee advocacy, and even reduce employee turnover.

Employee Morale & Workplace Relationships

Companies that trust their employees to self-manage their own productivity make them feel valued. While there still need to be controls in place to limit excessive use, providing employees with the autonomy to use their desired social media tool responsibly can improve morale and contribute to a positive company culture.

In terms of workplace relationships, research from Harvard Business Review has shown that 82% of workers agree that social media can improve work relationships and 60% believe social media use supports decision-making processes. 

Responsible social media use allows coworkers to stay connected with one another in a more informal fashion than what is offered by traditional meetings and team chat platforms. There’s also ample opportunity for informal employee advocacy among colleagues, which helps improve the quality of life for employees.

Even seeing each other’s Facebook notes or Instagram reels might create a sense of friendship and shared experiences within the workplace.

To make the most of these employee engagement benefits while reducing distractions some companies will go so far as to implement internal social media platforms such as Workplace from Meta (Formerly Workplace from Facebook). 

These platforms allow employees to stay connected with one another while providing companies with the administrative tools they need to keep their employees’ online profiles safe for work. They also provide a central hub for employee recognition, ideas sharing, and employee advocacy.

Communication & Knowledge Sharing

Social media provides a central hub for sharing information. With internal social media tools, employees can improve their organizational learning and share knowledge with their coworkers. This provides ample opportunities for employees to share new ideas and get feedback without sharing this information with the general public. Also, employees can schedule LinkedIn posts to efficiently share updates and engage with their professional networks.

Using Social Media FOR Work

In today’s dynamic professional landscape, leveraging social media has become essential for individuals and businesses alike. From networking and brand building to staying informed about industry trends, there are several legitimate work-related reasons for engaging with social media platforms. Professionals can use these platforms to cultivate meaningful connections, share industry insights, and showcase their expertise.

Social media content planning plays a pivotal role in this digital strategy, ensuring a consistent and purposeful online presence. By strategically mapping out content, individuals and businesses can maintain a cohesive narrative, establish thought leadership, and engage with their target audience effectively.

Whether it’s promoting products, sharing educational content, or participating in relevant conversations, a well-thought-out content plan enhances visibility and fosters a positive online reputation. Embracing social media for work-related purposes, with a focus on content planning, empowers individuals and organizations to navigate the digital realm with purpose and professionalism.

Naturally, employees who are tasked with using social media FOR work need to have uninterrupted access to social media platforms. For that reason it’s recommended to use web filtering software such as BrowseControl that allows you to easily assign unique allow + block lists to each employee or department.

Professional Networking

Social media platforms are essential tools for external communications with professionals that are outside of the employer brand. Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn give employees an opportunity to connect with other professionals in related fields, giving them access to new ideas and critical connections.

Naturally, this level of connectedness is a double-edged sword. While time spent building professional networks can benefit the company these tools can also be used to search for new career opportunities while on the clock. 

Tips for Managing the Use of Social Media Sites at Work

Write a use of social media in the workplace policy.

Social media policies for employees are absolutely essential for any business that wants to encourage social media use in the workplace. Without these policies employees may inadvertently harm employer branding with poor messaging or inflammatory comments. 

While you cannot control how an employee chooses to represent themselves on their personal accounts, providing professional guidance will help your employees understand the impact that social media can have on the company.

At its core, a simple social media in the workplace policy will cover:

• Principles that apply to professional use of social media on behalf of the company as well as guidelines for appropriate personal social media use
• Whether the company will exert its right to review and monitor the online activities of employees
• Guidelines for how to respond to customers and the general public over social media
• Examples of appropriate and inappropriate social media use
• Clarifications on intellectual property rights as it related to corporate social media profiles
• Data security and privacy requirements
• Contacts for legal, PR/media, and other core channels

Simply writing a social media in the workplace policy isn’t enough, though; you need to clearly communicate it to the company’s employees. 

According to the 2021 Employee Social Media Risk Report from TribalImpact 58% of employees who shared information about their company on social media every week, don’t understand, haven’t read, or aren’t aware of a social media in the workplace policy.

Furthermore, of the employees who have said something negative about their employer on social media, 49% either haven’t read their employer’s social media in the workplace policy, don’t understand it, or aren’t aware one event exists.

Encourage Employees To Use Social Networking Sites Responsibly

Whether employees will be permitted to use social networks for personal reasons or strictly for work related purposes, it’s important that they are aware of the expectations your company has. 

Be certain to overview how social networking relates to your existing policies, what level of personal use is permitted, and what corrective actions may need to be taken if excessive use becomes an issue.

Monitor Or Block Access To Social Media In The Workplace

As noted in the Pew Research Centre survey, 34% of employees browse social networks while on the clock to take a mental break from their job.

The idea of non-work web browsing having a positive effect on productivity is not unfounded, either. According to a publication from Brent Coker of the University of Melbourne short mental breaks can have a positive impact on employee productivity; but only so long as non-work internet browsing does not consume more than 12% of an employee’s work time.

Which begs the question: Knowing that there’s this 12% sweet spot, how can companies get all the benefits of social media at work without negatively affecting employee productivity?

With workplace internet filtering and monitoring software you can avoid falling victim to the well known examples of employee internet abuse such as cyberbullying, cyberloafing, sexual harassment, and data theft.

These tools allow an organization to encourage employees to use social media at work while providing them with the means to enforce their policies if too many workers abuse their social networking privileges. 

Company Social Media Policy Example Template

START OF TEMPLATE

About This Social Media Policy

This social media policy provides guidance to employees regarding the recommended acceptable use of social media as it relates to their employment with <<COMPANY>>. 

<<COMPANY>> supports the rights of its employees to express themselves freely through social media. These guidelines are not intended to infringe upon protected concerted activities that you as an employee and citizen have a right to engage in. 

The guidelines provided in this document do not apply to an employee’s right to exercise their collective bargaining rights or any other freedoms or rights they have with respect to <<LEGISLATION>>.  

Rather, this policy serves to establish expectations for professional conduct and provide employees with the best practices for representing <<COMPANY>> on social media in both official and unofficial capacities.

For example, employees retain their right to freely discuss their wages or working conditions. While grievances are best settled with direct communication between the employee and relevant parties, employees are free to express their grievances so long as their expression is truthful, lawful, and devoid of discrimination against protected classes.

Any concerns with this policy should be directed to <<CONTACT>> for further discussion.

These guidelines apply to social media use from two key perspectives: 

• Employees, contractors, and consultants that use official <<COMPANY>> social media profiles to represent the company, and;
• The professional conduct expectations of any associate that formally or informally represents <<COMPANY>> on their personal social media.

For the purposes of this policy, social media is defined as sites and services that permit users to share information with other users. This includes, but is not limited to, blogs, online forums, wikis, chat rooms, newsletters, social networking sites, and other forms of electronic communication.

Examples of such sites and services include, but are not limited to, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia, TikTok, and Reddit. 

Throughout this policy employees will be used to collectively refer to employees, contractors, consultants, and other representatives of <<COMPANY>>.

Social Media Use During Work Hours

While a reasonable amount of personal social media use is permitted during work hours, employees must ultimately act in the best interests of <<COMPANY>> . Personal use of social media must not interfere with your responsibilities as an employee. As such, disregarding job responsibilities and deadlines to use social media at work will not be tolerated.

<<COMPANY>> reserves the right to limit and monitor social media use during work hours through managerial and/or technical means.

All use of social media must abide by <<COMPANY>> ’s existing policies, including but not limited to our Acceptable Use Policy, Discrimination & Harassment Prevention Policy, and <<MENTION ANY RELEVANT COMPLEMENTARY SECURITY/CODES OF CONDUCT POLICIES HERE>>.

Guidelines on the Acceptable Use of Social Media

This section provides guidelines that employees should consider when using social media during their employment with <<COMPANY>> .

<<COMPANY>> supports the rights of its employees to express themselves freely through social media. This policy does not seek to unduly restrict the use of personal social media channels. However, employees must be cognizant of the fact that their online conduct may be seen as a representation of <<COMPANY>>.  

Whether they are using social media in an official or unofficial manner, employees should use their best judgment in ensuring that they avoid posting material or engaging in conduct that is inappropriate or harmful to <<COMPANY>> , its employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Such prohibited material or conduct includes commentary, content, or images that are defamatory, pornographic, proprietary, harassing, libelous, or that can otherwise create a hostile work environment.

Tone, Messaging, and Attitude

• All employees are expected to conduct themselves professionally in their online activities. All policies and expectations which apply to an employee’s offline conduct also apply to their online communications when representing <<COMPANY>> .
• Discriminatory remarks, harassment, and threats of violence will not be tolerated and may subject you to disciplinary action up to and including termination.
• When speaking with or about your colleagues any defamatory, offensive or derogatory content or statements may be subject to <<COMPANY>>’s Discrimination & Harassment Prevention Policy, even when made on your personal accounts.

Company Representation & Conflicts of Interest

• Employees must be cognizant of the fact that anything shared on the internet can be readily duplicated and spread beyond their intended audience. Therefore, their local posts can have an unintentional global significance.
• When using social media for personal use you must not represent yourself as a spokesperson for <<COMPANY>> without prior approval.
• When referencing <<COMPANY>> in your online communications, be transparent about your association with <<COMPANY>> and state that your views are your own to make it clear that you are not speaking on behalf of the company. 
• Exercise extreme caution when making declarations or promises towards customers and other stakeholders on social media channels. As a guideline, avoid commenting on matters that fall outside of your role. 
• When operating official accounts you must avoid deleting or ignoring comments with genuine feedback or remarks. These comments are an opportunity to connect with our stakeholders and should be proactively addressed. In the event that a comment, question, or concern falls outside of your area of expertise please leverage relevant internal contacts for assistance.
• Employees must be honest and accurate in their representation of <<COMPANY>>. In the event that you post misinformation about <<COMPANY>> or post misinformation on <<COMPANY>> social media accounts you must correct or remove the content in a timely manner. Such corrections may require a correction notice depending on the context.
• Employees are not permitted to create new accounts that directly represent <<COMPANY>> without prior approval from <<CONTACT>>.

Information Security Responsibilities

• When using personal or corporate social media profiles, employees must maintain the confidentiality of trade secrets and private or confidential information. This includes refraining from making company-related announcements before their official announcement period and posting internal reports, policies, procedures or other confidential internal documents.
• With regards to financial disclosure laws employees must not provide confidential company information to others with the intention of informing the purchase or sale of stocks or securities.
• Wherever possible, social media account managers should avoid sharing passwords for company-owned accounts. Social media management tools that allow the addition, limitation, and revocation of account access should be used instead.
• Company-provided email addresses must not be used to create personal accounts; such misuse increases the risk of accounts becoming compromised. Compromised accounts increase the risk of fraud, data theft, and the further compromise of  <<COMPANY>> ’s systems.

Other Best Practices

• For the most effective resolution, employees are strongly encouraged to settle workplace grievances internally and avoid postings on social media about workplace issues.
• Employees should be aware that any of the information or communications posted on their social media can potentially be accessed by their colleagues, managers, competitors, law enforcement agencies, and those that may be outside of the employee’s trusted network.
• It is strongly recommended that employees receive consent before referring to or posting images of current or former employees, vendors, suppliers, and customers.

Intellectual Property Rights & Account Ownership

• All accounts that are created for the purpose of representing <<COMPANY>> are the sole and exclusive property of the company. This includes all followers, messages, postings, and other content associated with the accounts.
• All personal accounts will remain the property of the employee. <<COMPANY>> will never request the usernames and passwords for employee-owned social media accounts and any such requests must be reported to <<CONTACT>> for corrective actions.
• While employees are encouraged to positively represent <<COMPANY>> on their personal social media accounts, said accounts must not be used to officially represent the company without prior approval.
• When sharing content on <<COMPANY>>’s official social media profiles, employees must exercise due diligence in respecting the intellectual property rights of others. All content that is shared to official accounts must respect copyright and intellectual property laws.
• Depending on the context of non-original content and relevant copyright and intellectual property laws, all content must be either free of copyrights, be shared with the explicit permission of the copyright owner, or shared with proper attribution to the copyright owner. It’s critical to note that attribution alone is often insufficient.

Enforcement

• While in the vast majority of instances <<COMPANY>> does not have the authority or desire to dictate what its employees post and share on social media sites, egregious conduct that has the potential to harm the reputation and/or performance of <<COMPANY>>, its customers, employees, and other stakeholders may be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination or legal action. 
• <<COMPANY>> reserves the right to monitor the online activities of its employees as well as any online communications made using company resources. This monitoring may include, but is not limited to, social listening tools, using monitoring tools on company-owned devices and networks, anonymous reports from concerned stakeholders, and the hiring of third-party companies.
• Wherever possible all grievances will be resolved internally without resorting to legal actions. Extreme cases of misconduct such as intellectual property infringement claims, the neglectful or malicious breach of one’s information security responsibilities, and the dissemination of obscene or hateful materials may require legal action. 

Points of Contact

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this policy please direct them to the relevant point of contact. 

• <<CONTACTS FOR HUMAN RESOURCES, MEDIA, LEGAL, AND OTHER RELEVANT DEPARTMENTS>>

END OF TEMPLATE

Conclusion & More Resources

The use of social media in the workplace presents a unique list of challenges and opportunities for organizations. 

With a clearly defined social media policy you can take advantage of the positive effects of information sharing, employee morale, and employee advocacy while mitigating the possibilities of lost productivity, data breaches, and inappropriate social media use.

If excessive social media use in the workplace is draining the productivity of your employees, consider using workplace internet filtering and monitoring software to control how your employees use social networks during work hours.

Sai Kit Chu

Related posts, remote work vs office productivity—which is more productive, case study—citrix employee monitoring tool drives productivity for the coding network.

Insights & Articles

Should employees be allowed to use social media at work.

While social media has been undeniably invaluable when it comes to specific modern business applications, most business owners still consider it a dirty word. Being able to talk directly to consumers might be fantastic for your profits, but paying employees to browse social media at work isn’t exactly going to impress.

Whether employees are moaning to their mates or posting pictures of their packed lunches, social networking sites can eat up untold amounts of work time, and leave your company struggling as a result. This is why countless employers spend hours banning certain sites or restricting personal use.

As social media comes ever more to the fore though, managers are left with a difficult decision: should employees be allowed to use social media at work after all? This debate is rife with ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes,’ making it difficult to know whether a no-tolerance policy is best. To help you decide, we’re going to break down the whys and what-fors of whether you could benefit from allowing employees to use social media at work.

Social media cons you can’t ignore Before you delve into whether social media should be allowed in your workplace, it’s worth refreshing yourself on why you banned it in the first place. The more time that passes without employees logging onto the dreaded bluebird, after all, the more you may forget what you hated about it in the first place.

Lost productivity A survey from 2012 revealed that widespread social media usage could result in up to 390 wasted working hours a year . That’s an average of nine working weeks, all because you allowed employees to use social media. The lost profits don’t even bear thinking about.

Increased security risks Cybersecurity is always a pressing business concern, with data breaches costing in everything from downtime to legal fines, and even reputational damage. Worryingly though, around 20% of the links on any Facebook feed contain viruses. Worse, employees walking into these traps could leave your virus protection software void. Like it or not, then, changing your policy could mean letting more than just social networking sites back into your business.

Reputational damage When you post on your business socials, you probably spell check, edit, and guarantee political correctness. Sadly, you can’t ensure the same if employees are posting online during the working day. A poorly-worded update, or the use of social media when a client is waiting on a service, is guaranteed to harm your company’s reputation in a significant way.

The plus points that put social media up for discussion With those cons in mind, you may be wondering why you would ever waiver on your social media policy. In reality, though, social media usage done right does also offers workplace benefits. In the name of fairness, it’s vital that you also consider these:

Improved collaboration Business-based social platforms have proven invaluable for improving collaboration within businesses. In fact, 82% of employees believe that social websites could improve working relationships. That’s an impressive percentage, and one that any manager dealing with different departments will want to consider.

Increased morale/engagement No employee likes to feel that their employer doesn’t trust them, and a total social ban does suggest a certain hesitation on your part. This can damage employee morale like little else and may see your workplace flatter than a pancake in no time. If that happens, productivity could be set to suffer regardless.

Personal development While you might not initially think so, social media offers personal development. Sites like LinkedIn, for instance, provide endless articles that could both inspire and improve employee skill sets. Twitter, too, can lead to business connections and followings that could provide development employees would struggle to harness elsewhere. That’s sure to help your company’s bottom line in the long-run, and it needn’t cost you a penny.

So, should social media be banned in the workplace?

With the above in mind, it’s easy to see that this isn’t a cut and dry issue. While employers may still be unsure about instigating business-wide social media use, there’s no denying the benefits that well-planned social networking sites could bring to the modern workplace. But how exactly can you implement those advantages without compromising on company culture?

Perhaps the best option here is to redefine the social platforms you consider for workplace implementation. While Twitter and Instagram are notorious for lost productivity, companies are now recognising the need for more business-focused networking platforms, and these, rather than general social media, could bring the benefits mentioned directly to your door.

Use dedicated social platforms to increase employee engagement Whether you work within a retail or office setting, allowing mobile and computer access to the best business-specific employee engagement apps and networks comes complete with advantages like workplace recognition , improved inter-business connections, and even widespread morale. As well as connecting members of different teams, integrations like these allow you to share company updates and more from one secure place.

Bear in mind that, to ensure success with free usage in this area, you will want to consider the different employee engagement options available and the benefits each stands to bring. Facebook Workplace and Yammer, for example, both have the downsides of private chat functions that could still result in unnecessary lost productivity or even workplace bullying.

By comparison, platforms created with employee recognition and relationships in mind provide open social spaces that everyone can access and enjoy without falling down the ‘social pit’ you’re afraid of. Many of these apps even allow you to celebrate employees’ successes on a social timeline, making them feel valued. Just like that, your employees should feel happier and more appreciated to boot, with a much less restrictive social platform policy behind them.

The smart way around social media bans

No one’s saying that you should entirely lift workplace bans on certain websites. Still, redefining what your ban entails is guaranteed to be useful for helping employees thrive in the modern market.

Far from leading to endless desk-based selfies, integrating employee engagement platforms into your working days can lead to office-wide smiles and increased engagement that provides a much-needed boost to your profits and productivity.

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Managing and Leveraging Workplace Use of Social Media

The growth of social media has significantly changed the way people communicate at home and at work. Common social media applications include sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Not only has social media changed the way we communicate, but it presents great opportunities for businesses in the areas of public relations, internal and external communications, recruiting, organizational learning and collaboration, and more.

There are also potential issues with social media use in the workplace. Concerns with employees using their personal social media accounts during work hours, "friending" of subordinate employees and potential misuse of social media platforms. The development and administration of social media use policies is a top concern for employers. HR often takes the lead in developing, communicating and enforcing social media policies and on keeping up with the changing legal landscape of social media.

Social media are information-based tools and technologies used to share information and facilitate communications with internal and external audiences. Well-known examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but social media can take many different forms including Internet forums, online profiles, podcasts, pictures and video, e-mail, instant messaging, music sharing programs, and Internet-based voice services (voice over IP), to name just a few. Social media also include applications sometimes known as "Web 2.0," a term encompassing technologies such as blogs, texting, wikis, and other applications like Google Reader and Google Docs.

Organizations can make use of social media in a variety of ways. Departments can hold brainstorming sessions or maintain ongoing conversations with questions and answers on a blog; teams can use wikis to manage projects, share best practices and research case studies; the CEO can keep a blog or record a podcast; and organizations can immediately deliver news to employees.

Collaborative technologies are valuable in the workplace because of their effectiveness in improving understanding and teamwork, building relationships and developing lateral communication. The novel aspect of social media is their conversational tone: Knowledge sharing takes place through processes including discussion with questions and answers (online forums), collaborative editing (wikis) or storytelling with reactions (blogs).

Business Case

Social media is a not a fad that will soon fizzle out. Organizations that do not include social media in their business strategy run the risk of losing relevance in the market. Even traditional "brick and mortar" companies have some presence in social media, be it the CEO on Twitter or a business page on Facebook. More and more, companies are including social media as part of their strategic planning processes, including recruitment, training and development, and to influence organizational change. Even Donald Trump gives partial credit to Twitter for the success of his presidential election.

Recruitment may see improvements in reducing time-to-fill statistics and in finding more (and possibly more qualified) candidates by casting a much wider net. Through the use of social media, organizations may reduce training costs and increase self-directed employee development and continuous skill enhancement. Social media can also be used to reinforce organizational culture, or to change that culture through communication.

Pros and Cons of Using Social Media

As with most technologies, there is no one-size-fits-all approach and no single right way for an organization to use social media applications. The benefits and drawbacks of social networking vary based on platform type, features, industry and the organization itself.

Possible advantages

Why should an organization have its own official presence on social media? Reasons include the following:

• Facilitates open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery.
• Allows employees to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links.
• Provides an opportunity to widen business contacts.
• Targets a wide audience, making it a useful and effective recruitment tool.
• Improves business reputation and client base with minimal use of advertising.
• Promotes diversity and inclusion .  
• Expands market research, implements marketing campaigns, delivers communications and directs interested people to specific websites.

Possible disadvantages

Despite the business pluses of these sites and tools, they also create issues of security and legal liability for employers. Use of social media at work—by employees for personal use or by the employer as an official tool—can open up organizations to the following:

• The possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks.
• The risk of employees falling prey to online scams that seem genuine, resulting in data or identity theft or a compromise of the company's computer security.
• A potential outlet for negative comments from employees and/or customers about the organization. See Social Media Is a Major Consideration in Wave of Sexual Harassment Allegations .
• Legal consequences should employees misuse social media to engage in illegal activity.

See What are the pros and cons of using social media in the workplace? What should we include in a policy?

Common Business Applications

The following are examples of how employers are leveraging social media for maximum organizational benefit.

Recruitment

The use of social media sites is pervasive in the recruitment function, with most organizations using social media for recruitment.

Social media sites can be used for informal networking, mining for talent or simply posting openings. For example, employers can use social networking sites to post challenging technical questions and then contact respondents who provide the best answers.

Recruiters can use relationship management tools to build and track connections with passive job candidates who are not currently job-hunting. Recruiting applications designed for smartphones, tablets and other devices allow recruiters to more effectively search online or exchange information. Recruiters can also create specialty recruiting sites for specific industries. Employers commonly use sites such as Twitter and Facebook to announce employment opportunities to those who subscribe to or follow the company's news feeds.

Hiring? Look Beyond LinkedIn

How to Use Social Media for Applicant Screening

What to Do When a Job Candidate's Social Media Triggers Red Flags

The use of social media in recruitment also carries legal risks unique to the social media environment. For more about these risks, see the "Legal Issues" section below .

Employee engagement

Employees are often more engaged in the workplace if they feel informed and if they believe their opinions are heard. Social media can give employers a way to spread the word as well as a way to channel employee comments.

Some organizations use a corporate Facebook page to communicate new programs or policies to their employees. A key benefit is that employees can react to announcements immediately with comments or questions. Other employers use a corporate blog or video sharing to keep employees around the world engaged in regular meetings. Social media can be an excellent tool for quickly disseminating information on the state of the organization and have all employees feel involved, making them feel more connected and more a part of the organization and its mission.

External communications

Organizations can use social media to promote their brand. Many organizations have a digital presence on sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn or other industry-related sites. Leaders often have a presence on Twitter or a blogging site to broadcast important developments within the organization. Organizations use Yammer or other collaboration sites to link both internal groups and external sources such as vendors, clients or industry experts.

Learning applications

Social media are radically changing the way learning happens in organizations. Social media allow employers to embrace the younger generation's need to collaborate and learn, which in turn will transform the workplace into an environment where people learn naturally with each other all the time, not just during a single training event. Social media allows for interacting with employees both before, during and after the actual training session. But organizations will need to change how they think about training and learning programs. Training models that focus on controlling the content and pushing information down to learners will not work in the collaborative environment of social media.

Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration

Social media provide opportunity to leverage the diverse expertise many organizations already possess. Rather than turn to outside consultants or third-party providers, companies can harness internal expertise with tools, including microblogging, wikis, YouTube-like repositories of learning videos, expert directories or communities of practice. See Why Social Learning May Be Key to Solving Workplace Problems.

Internal social media spaces allow employees to collaborate and exchange ideas and experiences. These tools are also being used for self-service benefits enrollment, matching current employees to open positions and more.

Some of the most innovative ways to foster collaboration across an enterprise include those listed below.

In blogs, writers regularly post entries for public view, often on specific topics—or on behalf of a specific organization. Blogs for business can be aimed at attracting the attention of potential employees, promoting a brand or a company, or disseminating information out to customers, among other uses. See SHRM Blog.

Blogging can be external—reaching the public—or internal—to improve business processes. For example, Marsh Inc., a global risk management and insurance broker, uses blogs internally for training. When the company wanted to teach finance to one employee group, it did not enlist instructional designers or vendors to create or tailor traditional training courses. Marsh turned instead to its finance experts, who created a 27-part blog series that included both written content and videos created with flip cameras and screen-capture technology.

Microblogging and microsharing

These technologies allow users to exchange information in small snippets and in real time. Twitter is an example of a microblog, but today some organizations use similar tools they can secure behind their computer firewalls and restrict to those inside the company. Employees can ask or answer questions, exchange information with peers, find out who has needed expertise and quickly give their input on projects. They can post their comments about documents, proposals or presentations. Yammer and Slack are other examples of microblogging platforms designed for internal communication. Employers are also using microsharing programs to make these immediate communications part of everyday workflow, rather than using them as stand-alone tools. For example, Marsh uses the tool Socialtext in its budgeting process. The tool gives users a box at the bottom of a budgeting screen where they can make comments as they go through a document, and others can see those comments instantly. Managers across divisions can communicate in real time to ask questions and address their budgeting challenges. See Are Collaboration Platforms Time Wasters or Productivity Boosters?

Expert directories

Another social media tool—an expert directory—simplifies and improves the process of connecting subject matter experts to others within an organization. These directories can include information on experts' specific competencies, current and past projects, and more. Creating a culture in which experts are willing to share their knowledge internally can be extraordinarily powerful.

Similar benefits can be enjoyed by others through the use of existing public-domain networking sites or basic freeware.

Communities of practice

To foster informal, employee-driven learning, employers have created communities of practice, groups where workers with similar expertise or interests can swap ideas and ask questions on internal forums. See The Year Ahead in Learning Technology .

For instance, Accenture integrates its knowledge-sharing systems with thousands of communities of practice. Community members ask questions on discussion boards, contribute or download content on specific topics, and have content digests e-mailed to them.

Employers need to realize that such communities change membership over time and that employee participation waxes and wanes. Also, not all of the comments shared by employees on discussion boards, blogs or wikis are factually accurate. Those overseeing social media networks have to walk a fine line between censoring content and ensuring that information is accurate.

Video instruction

The use of video has gained traction as an employee learning tool, fueled by the growth of smartphones with high-definition video and broadband networks. As a result, more organizations are creating YouTube-like repositories on enterprise networks where employees post videos created to share knowledge.

Potential Risks of Using Social Media

The growing use of social media is not without risks. Employee use of these sites, whether for personal use or as an official part of the employer's social media strategy, can open the door to certain liabilities.

Exposing networks to attack

Employees may not be aware of how their actions online could compromise organizational security. Visiting social networking sites at work can expose company networks to malware, including adware and spyware. Malware, or malicious software, is designed to take control of and damage a computer. It can help hackers steal identities and data.

Organizations must educate employees about how a downloaded application or even a simple click on a received link can infect their computers and the network at large. Employers should also warn workers not to click on suspicious links and to pay careful attention when providing personal information online.

Distributing confidential information

A critical concern about social networking platforms is that they encourage people to share personal information. Even the most cautious and well-meaning people can give away information they should not; the same applies to what is posted on company-approved social networking platforms.

Organizations that maintain an official Twitter feed or a corporate Facebook page want public recognition—in fact, the point is to attract followers. These employers keep, and often publicize, statistics about their numbers of followers and views. This dynamic is where the danger lies. In an attempt to be personal and provocative, employers that allow any employee to post on the company account also leave themselves open to problems—such as potential disclosure of confidential organization information, violation of employment policies or other rules, or public relations headaches.

Creating tattletales

Another issue for employers is the problem of employees tattling to managers about other employees' personal posts on social media sites, especially when those items could get the poster in trouble at work. HR needs to anticipate this eventuality and have a procedure in place: Managers take no initial action, and HR checks the questionable posts first because the posts may be protected speech.

Social Media Guidelines

A formal social media policy is a necessity. Employers do have the right to prohibit any personal use of company computers and block employee access to social media sites, but such a prohibition is not likely to yield optimal results. If an employer decides to permit employees access to social networking platforms, then the employer needs a comprehensive and well-defined policy to prevent abuse. See How to Create an Effective Social Media Policy .

What a policy should cover

An effective social networking policy generally does the following:

• Defines what the organization means when it refers to "social networking."
• Establishes a clear and defined purpose for the policy.
• Communicates the benefits of social networking and of having a policy.
• Provides a clear platform for educating employees.
• Takes into consideration any legal consequences of not following laws.
• Refers to proprietary and confidential information at risk.
• Talks about productivity in terms of social networking.
• Establishes expected behavioral norms in the use of social networking.
• Provides guidance regarding social networking that could be associated with the organization, employees or customers. Some employers may prohibit posting of company information on social networking sites without the employer's explicit consent.
• Outlines disciplinary measures the employer will take if employees violate social media policy.

See Social Media Policy .

Social networking do's and don'ts

Specifically, comprehensive policies and training efforts about social media need to convey to employees that they should:

• Exercise good judgment and common sense.
• Pause before posting.
• Not allow social networking to interrupt productivity.
• Be mindful of their privacy settings.
• Refrain from anonymity.
• Be polite and responsible.
• Be accountable and correct mistakes.
• Use disclaimers or speak in the first person to make it clear the opinions expressed are not those of their employer.
• Bring work-related complaints directly to HR, not through postings on social media sites or the Internet.
• Remember the audience and that what is being said might create a perception about the employer.

Legal Issues

Among the legal issues employers should watch are policy content, problems with using social media for recruitment and hiring, social media "friendings" and questions about ownership of materials posted online. See Can we force an employee to take discriminatory statements off a personal Facebook page? and Employees May Be Fired for Hate Speech on Social Media .

Policies and protected activity

Any policy should be in the form of a guideline, not an absolute rule. If a guideline is made into a rule, the employer may possibly violate the National Labor Relations Act, which says employees have the right to engage in "protected concerted activity." In a nutshell, when two or more employees discuss the terms and conditions of employment in a way that is designed or intended to effect change, they have the right to do that—and this protection applies to employee interactions through the use of social media too. See Congressional Staffers Detail Toxic Workplaces, Poor Treatment .

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is actively shaping the legal framework of social media use by employees. In several cases, the NLRB found social media policies overbroad and unlawful because the policies discouraged protected concerted activity. According to the NLRB, the mere existence of an overly broad social media policy exposes the employer to an unfair labor practice charge even if no disciplinary action is taken against an employee. NLRB is building case law on social media and the workplace through its rulings on adverse actions involving employee use of social media use. Employers should become familiar with NLRB's decisions. See NLRB Memo Clarifies Rules for Workplace Social Media Policies .

Recruitment and hiring issues

Employers must exercise caution when using social networks for recruiting or when viewing candidates' personal social media profiles while in the recruiting or hiring processes. Social media can play a role in the screening process, but employers should consider when and how to use social media this way and weigh potential legal pitfalls:

• Access to protected information about candidates. When looking at candidates' social media profiles, HR professionals may learn information they should not have when screening candidates. A candidate could claim that a potential employer did not offer a job because of information found on a social networking site, which discusses legally protected categories such as the candidate's race, ethnicity, age, associations, family relationships or political views. To avoid problems, employers should ensure they do not use social media to screen applicants when deciding who gets an interview. They should also require that HR, not the hiring manager, conduct any social media reviews—and only during the background check of the finalist, when the HR professional already knows the finalist's equal employment opportunity profile. See Screening Candidates' Social Media May Lead to TMI, Discrimination Claims .
• Negligent hiring claims. An employer can be liable for harm its employees inflict on others when the employer knew or should have known of the employee's potential risk to cause harm, or if the risk would have been discovered by a reasonable investigation. For example, if derogatory information about a workplace violence incident that could have foreshadowed the bad behavior were available on the perpetrator's public social networking profile, the employer might be held liable for negligence in not using this information when the hiring decision was made. See Viewpoint: Conduct Careful Background Checks for Racism .

Risky "friendships"

Online "friending" between managers and employees increases the chance—should a working relationship turn sour—of additional claims in any subsequent employment litigation. Managers will all too easily wind up with too much information if they have "friended" their employees, including (as with recruiting and hiring issues above) personal information that might fall within a protected category under federal or state employment laws. A fired or disciplined employee might later argue that the real reason for any adverse employment action was based on personal information that the manager learned by viewing the employee's social media site.

If managers and employees become each other's contacts on professional sites such as LinkedIn, the online relationship can come back to bite the employer. For example, if a supervisor or manager writes an online recommendation for an employee and later fires that employee, the employee might be able to cite the online recommendation as evidence that he or she was not performing poorly. Employers need policies about recommendations or other comments managers may or may not make on such sites.

Yet employers might be reluctant simply to prohibit managers from friending employees. Such a prohibition might itself be the target of legal challenges under laws guaranteeing the right of privacy and the right to associate, or under laws restricting employers from regulating lawful off-premises conduct.

Password requests

Growing risks and legal implications exist when employers ask applicants and employees for their passwords to social media sites. In 2012 Maryland became the first state to pass legislation to prohibit employers from requiring access to social media passwords. Since then, more than 25 states have enacted similar laws. While information posted publicly to a social media site may be fair game, employers should never ask an individual to allow the employer access to information that is password protected.

Ownership disputes

Lawsuits over social media are on the rise as employers and former employees wrangle over who owns Twitter handles and followers, as well as LinkedIn connections and Facebook friends.

In one case, a website sued an editor who left but took his Twitter followers with him; the site maintained that those followers belonged to the site, not to the individual editor. The followers were effectively a customer list generated when the editor worked for the site, the site's lawyers argued. In another case, a former employee sued her employer for access to her LinkedIn account, which the employer cut off when she left the company because the account had been maintained for her by company staff.

Organizations should ensure that social media policies say who owns those accounts and their followers and what happens to those accounts if an employee leaves. See When Employees Leave: Who Owns Social Media Accounts?

Measuring the results of social media strategies is a common practice. The types of metrics tracked include:

• Visitors and sources of traffic.
• Network size (followers, fans, members).
• Quantity of commentary about brand or product.

Monitoring data are only valuable if the organization is tracking and analyzing metrics relevant to it and then applying the information to improve its social media strategy. As part of their social media strategy, organizations should identify what important metrics to track. Undoubtedly, the range of metrics to consider will continue to evolve as social media use continues to expand.

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Privacy and social media in the workplace

Revised: August 2019

What is social media?

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter Instagram and LinkedIn, are Internet-based services that provide individuals a way to interact with each other online. Some organizations may allow employees to access and use their personal social media accounts in the workplace during normal work hours or break-times. Other organizations might develop their own, internal social media to help employees work collaboratively — regardless of their physical location. Some organizations may establish official, external social media accounts to communicate with customers, business partners or the media.  

Using social media in the workplace

The use of social media in the workplace raises privacy implications for both employees and employers. Organizations should develop policies on the appropriate use of social media in the workplace.

Privacy implications for employees

Most individuals view their personal social media pages as private. However, employees should be aware that any of the information or communications posted on their social media can potentially be accessed by:

• current or potential employers;
• recruitment agencies;
• co-workers;
• the employer’s competitors;
• government and law enforcement agencies;
• others outside the employee’s trusted network.

Depending on the privacy settings set by the individual user, personal information and communications posted on a social media site can be read by unintended people. 

Monitoring employee social media

• Employees should know  that, subject to existing workplace policies and rules, some organizations monitor their employees’ social media.
• Employees should be aware  that when using social media in a workplace context — including a social media account hosted by their employer — that their personal information can be collected, used and disclosed by the employer. This could include off-duty comments and postings on social media about workplace issues or that may otherwise reflect on the employer.
• Employers should view  tracking existing employees through personal or work-based social media as a collection of personal information that may be subject to applicable privacy legislation in their jurisdiction.

Implications for staffing and recruitment

Many employers and recruitment agencies use Internet search engines and read personal social media, websites and blogs to learn more about job applicants – and existing employees.  During the staffing process, this practice may become a problem if it substitutes for more formal and thorough reference checks.

• Employees should know  that social media information may seem transitory and informal, but once personal information is posted online it gains permanence — and can be circulated and searched by others.
• Employers and recruiters should be aware  that social media pages, even if publicly available, can contain inaccurate, distorted or out of date personal information about job applicants, and should therefore be cautious about relying on that information.
• Employers and recruiters should also guard against  using personal information gathered from social media — or any other online source — in a discriminatory manner against a job candidate or an existing employee.

Consequences of inappropriate disclosure on social media

Employers and employees should be aware of the potential damages to individuals and the corporation through inappropriate disclosures of personal or confidential business information on social media. The possible consequences of an improper or unintended disclosure may be:

• a defamation lawsuit;
• copyright, patent or trademark infringement claims,
• a privacy or human rights complaint;
• a workplace grievance under a collective agreement or unfair labour practice complaint;
• criminal charges with respect to obscene or hate materials;
• damage to the employer’s reputation and business interests.

Legal responsibility for damages from an inappropriate disclosure could potentially rest with individual employees, management or the organization as a whole.

Employers: Develop and communicate a clear policy on social media

While many employers have guidelines and codes of conduct for e-mail and Internet use, social media poses different privacy challenges which should be specifically addressed in conjunction with these other workplace rules.  Clear rules and policies drafted specifically on the use of social media should be communicated to all employees.

The policy should generally establish best practices and outline expectations for acceptable use of social media in the workplace, set out the consequences of misuse, and address any workplace privacy issues.

Specifically, the policy should address:

• whether the organization permits the use of personal or employer-hosted social media in the workplace;
• if social media accounts  are permissible, in what context and for what purposes may they be used?
• whether the employer monitors social media sites;
• what legislation applies to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information in the workplace;
• what other rules may apply to the use of social media in the workplace (collective agreements; other relevant legislation);
• the consequences of non-compliance with the policy and,
• any other existing policies about the proper use of electronic networks with respect to employee privacy and handling confidential information.

Determine what data should not be disclosed

Employers should inform employees in plain language why it’s important to keep some personal and corporate information – about themselves, their co-workers, clients and the organization – confidential or undisclosed. Similarly, employers need to exercise judgment and abide by applicable privacy and other legislation if they decide to collect, use or disclose personal information from social media sources.  A privacy-friendly workplace calls for fair use of information by all parties.

A word on jurisdiction

In Canada, the  Privacy Act  deals with the collection, use and disclosure of personal information (including employee information) in the federal public sector. Both the OPC and Treasury Board Secretariat have produced guidance that may be helpful to understanding the use of social media in the workplace. Every province and territory has some form of public sector privacy legislation and an oversight authority.  

The  Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act  (PIPEDA) is Canada’s private sector privacy legislation. In the employment context, PIPEDA only applies to federal works, undertaking or businesses (FWUBs) in respect of their treatment of personal information of employees and applicants for employment with FWUBs.

For Businesses

For students & teachers, the top reasons companies block social media at work.

EVERFI Content Team

To block, or not to block social media at work? That is the question many employers are grappling with as social media continues to weave itself into the fabric of the business world. However, more and more companies are choosing to block access.

In fact, as many as 36 percent of employers block social media at work — up from 29 percent in 2012. One in five companies block Facebook, while 15 percent shut out Twitter and nearly 14 percent have banned YouTube. Meanwhile, employers who allow free access to all social media sites have dwindled from 53 to 43 percent.

“The widespread use of social media has struck fear into some employers about decreased productivity, unwanted publicity, and a general increase in exposure for various work-related claims,” said employment law expert Daniel Handman .

Misuse of Social Media in the Workplace Puts Companies at Risk

When a photo of a Taco Bell employee licking taco shells made its way into the social media news stream, the fast food giant naturally took a lot of heat. For many employers, it was just one more example of the risks inherent in allowing social media on the job.

As social media use has risen, so has its abuse among employees. More than 70 percent of businesses have had to take disciplinary action against employees for misusing social media, and more than 80 percent of employers anticipate such problems with social media in the workplace will become an even bigger issue in the future.

“With a tap of a keyboard, many years of careful and expensive branding and marketing can be undermined,” says a 2014 report on social media in the workplace.

Employee misuse of social networking sites can have a potentially costly impact on business. Business leaders have expressed rising concerns about risks such as:

• Misuse of confidential information (80%)
• Misrepresenting the views of the business (71%)
• Inappropriate non-business use (67%)
• Disparaging remarks about the business or employees (64%)
• Harassment (64%)

Perhaps the biggest concern, however, is that social media is wasting employees’ time.

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EVERFI designs global ethics and compliance courses that educate employees on important skills relating to harassment, diversity, security and culture—protecting your people and your bottom line.

Social Media is Linked to a Drop in Productivity

More than half of employees waste an hour or more at work every day, and social media has become their second-biggest time waster (after news sites). One-third of the U.S. workforce uses social media for at least an hour each workday.

Social media can also disrupt workflow. Nearly half of all employees get interrupted at least every 15 minutes, and almost 60 percent of these interruptions involve digital tools such as social networks or switching back and forth between windows.

On average, a single wasted hour each day can cost companies $10,375 in lost productivity per person each year — and for businesses with 1,000 employees, the cost of interruptions can exceed $10 million per year.

“The very tools we rely on to do our jobs are also interfering with that mission. We’re clearly seeing what psychologists call ‘online compulsive disorder’ spillover from our personal lives to the work environment,”  said Yaacov Cohen , co-founder and CEO of harmon.ie.

The Importance of a Social Media Workplace Policy and Training

Even if your company has decided to block social media access at work, it still doesn’t take away from the fact that employees will use social media in their personal lives. That’s why it’s essential your company has a detailed social media policy  — even if you block access.

Additionally, your company should provide social media training to reinforce the guidelines set forth in the policy. This will help reduce your risk.

For example, your company is launching a new product. The marketing team is finalizing a social media campaign around the launch with messaging approved by the CEO. But before that happens, an excited employee takes to Twitter on their lunch break to post about the product and unknowingly gives away details that the CEO wanted to keep confidential.

There goes all the hard work the marketing team has done, and you’re now scrambling to cover for the employee’s mistake. If you had specific rules for social media in the workplace, a policy, and social media training, the employee would have known not to Tweet about product launches.

Many companies are choosing to block social media access at work because they fear employee misuse as well as the resulting drop in productivity. However, even if your company does decide to block access at work, you still need a comprehensive social media policy and business ethics training to help reinforce the policy’s message.

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Home » Employees and HR » 13 Blocking Social Media at Work: Statistics and Reasons

13 Blocking Social Media at Work: Statistics and Reasons

The Argument for Restricting Social Media at Work

The rise of social media networks has brought with it many benefits, but also new challenges. Companies have to determine how using social media sites at work can affect employee productivity.

Different organisations have different rules and policies when it comes to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. A survey by Robert Half Technology questioned over 1400 chief information officers from companies throughout the U.S. to find out their policy on visit social media sites. The results were:

• 54 % don’t allow employees to access social networking site under any circumstance while at work. • 19 % allow some access for strictly business purposes only • 16 % allow limited access for personal use • 10 % allow unlimited and unrestricted access for personal use

Why do some companies block social media sites?

Companies have various reasons for restricting use of social networks. Some main reasons include: • Loss of productivity • Potential exposure of computers and networks to spyware, malware and viruses • Greater chance of corporate information being leaked • Possibility of legal liability for the company

What is the case for allowing social networks use in the workplace?

This issue isn’t one sided. Some people are in favour of allowing social media usage at work. According to studies from the University of Melbourne, social media can in fact increase productivity.

Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) includes visiting non- work related sites, checking on updates from friends and watching online videos. 70 % of workers who use the internet at work engage in WILB. Research has shown that those who do engage in WILB are on average 9 % more productive than those who don’t. However, the internet usage has to be balanced and within reason. WILB should be kept to less than 20 % of total office time for it to increase productivity.

Some web browsing throughout the day can often help ease the pressures of the job, and improve efficiency when getting back to work. Short breaks give the mind a short rest and result in higher concentration for the rest of the day, which means more work can be achieved.

Balancing connectivity and productivity

Social media can be used in enterprise to directly boost productivity and the bottom line. Some use connectivity tools include:

• Social Networks – for sharing and discussing ideas • Blogs – For posting company ideas and updates • Wikis – Ideal for collaborative tasks and efforts • Research Sharing – By utilizing videos and podcasts

A survey of 2500 people in European countries has revealed that 65 % of employees find that they work more efficiently with some social network use. Also 46 % said that social media helps spark their personal creativity.

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The Unintended Consequences of Banning Social Media

Severely limiting teen access to social media might do more harm than good..

Posted February 20, 2023 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

• What Changes During Adolescence?
• Find a therapist to support kids and teens
• Severely limiting social media might have serious unintended consequences for teens.
• State legislation limiting social media often doesn't take complexity or nuance into account.
• Such legislation will likely have no measurable impact on improving youth mental health.
• States should consider investing in widespread media literacy education instead of attempting to limit access.

I recently attended a mental health and social media symposium organized by Spencer Cox, the governor of my home state of Utah. Cox threw down the gauntlet :

"There is a compounding effect [of social media] that is impacting all of us and I am deeply worried about it. I know we have some social media companies in the room; we're glad you're here. We are putting you on notice. You have some options. You can fight, and that's fine. We're ready for the fight. Or you can join us and be part of the solution."

The message from several speakers at the conference was very clear:

Social media is harming our youth and is responsible for the increase of mental health struggles over the past decade. We should ban social media and every responsible parent agrees with us. Social media companies are greedy and knowingly did harm, comparable to the executives who perpetrated the opioid crisis.

Social media has become the ultimate scapegoat of our time. As large social media companies rake in billions, it is easy to cast them in the role of the villain. Adolescent anxiety and depression have risen over the past decade, and we want someone to blame.

As a result, states are suing social media companies for being responsible for mental health problems in their community. Legislators across the country are debating whether social media is responsible for the increase in mental health problems in youth.

In my state, there was a bill being introduced that was considering an outright ban on social media for anyone under the age of 18. The bill was softened slightly to require parent ID for any underage youth. Other states have introduced similar bills to significantly limit youth access to social media.

As a collective nation, we are at a fever pitch and out for blood. There is just one problem with this collective anger : It’s not supported by the research.

I am a social media scholar and have been studying the impact of media on children for twenty years. The collective research does not support banning social media and suggests it might harm some youth in the process.

Most serious social media scholars are left shaking our heads with the over-confident and definitive statements we hear from politicians and the press. The public discussion is dominated by some loud voices who are quick to point fingers but slow to consult the full body of research, which shows considerable nuance and complexity.

Can we just stop and take a breath for a minute? Consider that perhaps we might be going in the wrong direction.

The kids are struggling, but that doesn’t mean taking away social media will fix anything. Here are several reasons to believe that social media is not the cause of all our youth’s ills:

1. The link between social media and mental health is not as big as you think.

In fact, many studies show that it might even be negligible. For example, meta-analyses bringing together all the studies on this topic tend to bring back correlations of around .10, depending on the study, like the difference in height between a 15- and 16-year-old girl . This is really quite small considering the attention we have been giving this question.

Indeed, our research examined the time spent on social media, depression , and anxiety across the entire course of adolescence . We did not find a noticeable effect of social media on mental health when examined at the individual level. I was surprised, and it went against my hypothesis (gasp!). But I had to face the realization that this effect just isn’t as big as we thought it was.

The effects become larger (around .25, maybe comparable to the difference in height between a 15 and a 17-year-old girl) when we consider a teen who says they have “problems” with social media. Reducing problems around media (as opposed to the sheer time by banning social media) may be a more prudent way forward. (More on this below.)

2. The small and inconsistent findings might be about individual differences.

Some recent work out of the Netherlands suggests that the vast majority (92 percent) of adolescents have either a neutral or positive experience in terms of mental health after using social media. Using an assessment that measures how people feel in the moment, they were able to capture how adolescents felt while using social media. For the vast majority? They were just fine.

However, there is the question of that 8 percent struggle after being on social media. There are many explanations for why this might be the case. They could have had negative experiences online, such as being cyberbullied or excluded. They could be high on levels of rejection sensitivity , being fine-tuned to notice a social slight. They might have pre-existing body image concerns and spend their time on pro-anorexia sites . Or it might be something completely different. What the research suggests is that the vast majority of adolescents do quite well on social media, while a small minority do not.

3. Banning (or severely limiting) social media will likely hurt our most vulnerable adolescents. It might even be fatal.

When we think about depression and anxiety from a multifaceted lens, we recognize that some adolescents are much more vulnerable than others. These teens are often those who experience minority stress — unique stressors that occur in an adolescent’s environment as a result of their minority status.

This might include LGBTQ+ teens who might be the only “out” person at their school, who have to tolerate hearing gay slurs as they walk down the hallway. Or Black adolescents growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood who experience subtle (and often not so subtle) racism on a daily basis.

Research suggests that social media can provide a safe haven for these adolescents — a place where they can truly belong. Where they see others who are “like them.” Where they can find a real community that understands the stressors they go through each day.

Having a sense of belongingness is a huge protective factor against suicide . Thus, stripping away this sense of safety might have significant (and even deadly) unintended consequences for these youth that are already at risk.

Youth might also be turning to social media to cope with chaos and struggles in their lives. It might be that a teen has headphones on and is on social media to escape hearing his parents argue in the next room. Another might be getting support from online friends over something hard that happened at school. Yet another might struggle with social anxiety and experiences school as excruciating, yet has found online friends that make them feel like they can finally be themselves.

The experience of social media is extremely complex, and a complete ban will likely take away some truly positive coping skills for many.

4. Education , instead of fear , is likely the answer.

In our recent study , we found that time spent on social media had no effect on adolescent outcomes. However, body image was twice as good for teens who said they attended a school with a strong literacy program that helped them become healthy users of media. Depression, emotional problems, and conduct problems were also all reduced in such schools.

Instead of focusing so much on getting kids to put down their phones, instead of threatening to take phones away as a punishment , instead of overreacting as a country and banning a potentially useful tool that is a huge part of an adolescent’s social world, might we invest in education instead?

Imagine a world where every student had classes on digital literacy from an early age. Where they were taught not only how to use media but how to truly interpret it and to become critical thinkers of their media use. Imagine that adolescents utilized social media in ways that helped their mental health instead of hurting it. Where they had tools, and best practices to absolutely thrive in a digital environment.

Instead of being afraid and throwing out the baby with the bathwater, let’s step it up, America. Let’s invest in educating our youth at a national level, relying on balanced and accurate research to empower youth to truly take charge of their social media experiences for good.

Banning or severely limiting social media among adolescents is not the way forward and will have serious unintended consequences. It would be like letting a 16-year-old child drive without first having them take driver’s education. Instead of taking the keys away and randomly giving them back someday, can we please teach our kids to drive in this digital environment? It might just save a life.

A version of this post appears in the Salt Lake Tribune .

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7, dial 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .

Sarah M. Coyne, Ph.D., is a professor of human development in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. She researches media, aggression, gender, and child development.

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Your Social Media Presence Can Help You Land (or Lose) a Job Opportunity

• Rebecca Knight

Tips for curating a professional and engaging brand that resonates with prospective employers.

Your digital footprint and online activities can have a big effect on how attractive and visible you are to potential employers. How do you notify your network about your job search without sounding too desperate or needy? And if you’re currently employed, how do you walk the tightrope between subtly reaching out to your social media contacts and not setting off alarm bells with your employer? In this article, the author speaks with two experts about how to strategically manage your presence on social media when searching for a new role.

Your social media presence can make or break your job search. Tapping into your network’s connections and ideas can give you an edge, but it’s critical to be savvy and maintain professionalism. So, how do you post about your job search without appearing desperate? What’s the best way to showcase your skills to ensure your contacts think of you for opportunities? If you’re currently employed , how can you subtly signal you’re open to a new job without raising red flags at work? And if you’re a new grad just entering the working world, where do you even start?

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Should Kids Be Kept Off Social Media?

More from our inbox:, ‘arguing both sides of the law’ on declassifying documents, good careers in the restaurant industry, the empty society, caveat emptor, crypto investors.

To the Editor:

Re “ It Was a Mistake to Let Kids Onto Social Media Sites. Here’s What to Do Now ” (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 5):

Yuval Levin argues that it’s a mistake to let kids onto social media sites. I would argue that it is more of a mistake to let adults onto social media sites. Aren’t they the ones who are supposed to be doing their jobs and making the world run? It’s no surprise the world is falling apart when these adults are glued to their phones all day.

In addition, most of the negative and bad content online is created by adults. It floods the internet, causing sadness, confusion and so much chaos. We kids just want to chat and make each other laugh. Why should we be the ones who have our fun taken away?

I think Mr. Levin and the rest of the grown-ups should get off their phones and tablets and get back to work.

Clay Kryst Los Angeles The writer is 16 years old.

Social media is definitely damaging for kids under a certain age, and many issues are definitely exacerbated on social media. However, what we need to do now is more complex than just keeping kids off social media.

Kids are on social media right now, whether people like it or not. As a teen, I am definitely “acutely aware” that social media has the potential to be very harmful. I am also “acutely aware” that if more teens were taught how to handle social media and the multitude of pressures that come with it (and could access mental health help easily if they needed it), the damage of social media would be lessened.

Focusing on future steps to keep young children off social media could potentially have an impact. More important, however, there must be urgent action to help the kids who are currently on social media (or will be soon). Everyone, no matter where you stand on this issue, should be pushing for increased education around social media pressures and how to manage them and initiatives that make mental health care more accessible for teens.

Rushaad Mistry Foster City, Calif. The writer is a high school senior.

Yuval Levin’s suggestion is an interesting one, but experience tells us that kids are savvy at getting around age restrictions and safety guards. Kids today are forming connections using technology and growing up with a smartphone in their hands, so we must meet the moment by taking a holistic approach to keeping them safe online.

We need to ensure that social media platforms are designed to protect children from bad actors. And we must support parents by providing them with tools to have effective communication with their kids about online safety. Age limits alone will not take the place of these two fundamental elements.

Research shows that parents shy away from having difficult conversations about safety topics. For example, one recent survey shows that while the majority of parents have spoken with their kids about being safe on social media generally, less than a third have talked directly about sharing and resharing nude selfies.

In short, parents need support so they can feel confident having early and judgment-free conversations with their kids. Platforms need to be proactive in designing their platforms with child safety in mind. And youth need access to modern, relevant education on these tough topics to reduce shame and create a safety net.

Julie Cordua Los Angeles The writer is chief executive of Thorn, a nonprofit that builds technology and programs to defend children from sexual abuse.

On July 25, 2017, The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking to compel disclosure by the C.I.A. of records pertaining to a covert program on arming and training rebel forces in Syria. The Times argued that President Donald Trump had declassified the records when he referred to them in a post on Twitter.

The Trump administration fought against disclosing the records, arguing that Mr. Trump’s tweet did not declassify the records. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled for Mr. Trump and against The Times: “Because declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures.”

Yet now, Mr. Trump and his cohort are contending that he had the ability to declassify things at will. Even if one buys into that argument, there is no proof that Mr. Trump ever declassified the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. This doesn’t surprise me at all, because arguing both sides of the law depending only on its political effect has become the paradigm of the Republican Party.

But Donald Trump has still not answered why those documents were at his club. They were not his to take. They belong to the American people.

Fred Polvere Yonkers, N.Y.

Re “ Hulu’s ‘The Bear’ and the Restaurant Industry’s Long Overdue Reckoning ,” by Saru Jayaraman (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 7), which asserts that the restaurant industry pays inadequate wages:

This guest essay is misleading and unnecessarily provocative. Today’s restaurant and food service industry is innovative and competitive, and provides unparalleled opportunities for employees from every background. As the nation’s most diverse industry , restaurants offer a chance for success and a career for life to everyone.

In the current economic climate, earning potential is a key driver for every employee. Earning a tipped income allows restaurant employees to bring home a median of $27 an hour, with some earning as much as $41 an hour. When this system has been threatened, tipped workers have fought to keep it and have stopped every effort to eliminate the tipped minimum wage in the last 20 years.

Well-compensated employees provide great customer experiences, and there are many different compensation models that work well for companies. More important, these team members are proud of their work.

The National Restaurant Association was originally formed in 1919 to defend restaurants against egg brokers engaged in collusion and price fixing. Today, we continue our work of serving every restaurant and providing a pathway to success for every employee.

Michelle Korsmo Washington The writer is the president and C.E.O. of the National Restaurant Association and C.E.O. of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation.

Re “ The Medium Really Is the Message ,” by Ezra Klein (column, Aug. 14):

The stupefying effect of mass entertainment and popular culture has laid waste to our brains. Just as muscle strength is maintained by the principle of “use it or lose it,” so are the mental operations of the brain for critical, original thinking and for creativity.

Much of our entertainment is a time filler. Passive watching of entertainment and celebrity worship deaden the drive to make something of one’s life. The aloneness of contemporary society has fostered the perverse effects of social media, including disinformation and our current culture wars.

We have only ourselves to blame, not the medium, as we fiddle with the remote and go channel surfing. Life, instead of being really lived, has become a spectator sport.

Ronald Kallen Highland Park, Ill.

Re “ Investors Seek Return of Crypto ” (Business, Aug. 19):

I just cannot feel one iota of sympathy for those individuals who invested money in crypto currencies. Perhaps the visages of smiling celebrities hawking a product with no practical purpose or reasonable method of analyzing investment potential temporarily seduced them into this fantasy of quick profits. Caveat emptor, just like all other investment opportunities.

Stephen Green Denver