348 The Journal of Clinical Ethics Winter 2012 Articles from The Journal of Clinical Ethics are copyrighted, and may not be reproduced, sold, or exploited for any commercial purpose without the express written consent of The Journal of Clinical Ethics. Daniel R. George, PhD, MSc, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, drg21@ psu.edu. ©2012 by The Journal of Clinical Ethics. All rights reserved. Daniel R. George, “Making ‘Social’ Safer: Are Facebook and Other Online Networks Becoming Less Hazardous for Health Professionals?” The Journal of Clinical Ethics 23, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 348-52. Making “Social” Safer: Are Facebook and Other Online Networks Becoming Less Hazardous for Health Professionals? Daniel R. George ABSTRACT Major concerns about privacy have limited health pro- fessionals’ usage of popular social networking sites such as Facebook. However, the landscape of social media is changing in favor of more sophisticated privacy controls that enable users to more carefully manage public and private information. This evolution in technology makes it poten- tially less hazardous for health professionals to consider ac- cepting colleagues and patients into their online networks, and invites medicine to think constructively about how so- cial media may add value to contemporary healthcare. After watching a young child in the perina- tal intensive care unit (PICU) take her final breath, the 29-year-old resident exited the room where she privately grieved before pulling out her smart phone. Opening her Facebook app as the tears flowed, she typed a short, cathartic status update that was instantly published to her network of hundreds of friends: “An angel has a new pair of wings.” During the next 24 hours, more than 40 re- sponses were posted beneath the resident’s original thread, with friends and family from around the world comforting her for having witnessed the child’s death. Eventually, the child’s parents—from whom the resident had previously accepted a Facebook friend re- quest—each commented, thanking the doctor for her compassion and posting funeral infor- mation for their child. Realizing that the inno- cent status update had become a vessel for iden- tifiable patient information, the resident promptly deleted the post. This story sets off a fusillade of ethical ques- tions: Did the resident violate confidentiality, even though this was not her intent? What would her liability have been if other families with children in the PICU had seen the post and surmised that it was about their child? Is it appropriate or practical for medical profession- als to invite patients and their family members into one’s Facebook friend network in the first place? Do online friendships contribute to, or only endanger, healing relationships? And in- deed, if we consult the academic literature, we will find it replete with admonishments of how social media can endanger health profession-