2019 Training Institute for School Social Work Professionals
Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families
The Purpose of the 2019 Training Institue
During the last five years, the number of preadolescents and adolescents using social media has increased dramatically. Though social media offers benefits, there are also more risks to adolescents than most adults realize. Because of their limited capacity for self-regulation and susceptibility to peer pressure, children and adolescents are at some risk as they navigate and experiment with social media. Challenges such as cyberbullying, privacy issues, sexting, internet addiction, depression and sleep deprivation are becoming more prevalent.
The 2019 Institute will explore the benefits and challenges of social media, provide concrete strategies and interventions for school social workers and other youth serving practitioners as they work with school populations. The 2019 Institute will also offer guidance for engaging parents and other members of the school community.
About the Opening Speaker
Dr. Desmond Upton Patton
Dr. Desmond Upton Patton is an associate professor at Columbia University School of Social Work. He is a leading researcher on the positive and negative impact of social media and youth. His research uses qualitative and computational data collection methods to examine the relationship between youth and gang violence and social media; how and why violence, grief, and identity are expressed on social media; and the real-world impact these expressions have on well-being for low-income youth of color. He studies the ways in which gang-involved youth conceptualize threats on social media, and the extent to which social media shapes and facilitates youth and gang violence.
Dr. Patton is the founding Director of the SAFE lab, a member of the Data Science Institute, a faculty affiliate of the Social Intervention Group (SIG) and holds a courtesy appointment in the department of Sociology. He is the recipient of the 2018 Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR), and was a 2017-2018 Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
2019 Training Institute Opening Session: Leveraging Contextually Driven AI for Safer Schools
Opening Session for the 2019 Institute, hosted June 24, 2019, presented by Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, associate professor at Columbia University School of Social Work.