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To suggest that tapping this for educational purposes is pointless also suggests that people mistrust the medium as a whole and don’t understand how it can be used for good. We’ve already seen that Twitter and Facebook can help create change around the world. It can also do a lot of harm in the hands of bullies and criminals. But the technology is neutral. It can be made to work in a classroom setting if you set the right limits.

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

Taking away a child’s mobile phone will only put the ever present e-safety issues under the surface of school life. I feel much more confident in equipping our young people in how to effectively use social media instead. How do you report inappropriate content? How do you block someone? What should you do if you are, or see someone else being bullied?