Last February, the Google Buzz fiasco affected lots of people who did not want their email relationships exposed to the world. At the time, Dr. Kathleen Young and I shot a bunch of emails back and forth sharing our concerns over the situation. Dr. Young, who also maintains a professional Twitter account pointed out to me how Google Searches were showing people’s other connections through Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Google’s Social Search is currently in Beta and is a way that Google is creating a network of connections to identify relevant social search results.

Dr. Young and I thought we would share some of our musings about this with readers.

Dr. Young: After Dr. Kolmes and I exchanged information and thoughts about Google Buzz, I decided to investigate further how my social media boundaries might be affected. The lack of information from Google about privacy settings and Buzz led me to consider whether I needed to maintain a Google Profile and what its value is.

So I Googled myself!

I do this periodically and encourage anyone to do the same to gain information about your online presence. I saw that at the bottom of my search page Google was linking me to other people “In my Social Circle”, information apparently culled from other sites like WordPress (where I blog) and Twitter. It was not immediately clear whether this was information the general public has access to or only for my benefit.

[You may click on all images below to see larger versions.]

Dr. Kolmes: The results from People in Your Social Circle is similar to an issue I faced a year or so ago when a site called Delver was combing my professional LinkedIn profile and merging it with my non-professional accounts due to crossover of friend networks. This was the primary reason I decided to make my LinkedIn profile non-public. I don’t want search engines to put together a picture of my identity based upon my connections, and it feels invasive to me after the extensive work I’ve put into separating my professional and personal lives on the Internet. Google does provide information on how to change and troubleshoot Your Social Circle, but it can be time-consuming to have to constantly manage this information.

Dr. Young: Navigating social media as a psychologist, and a consumer, and determining ways to do so ethically is a challenge! What the Google Buzz debacle reminded me is that this is brand new and constantly changing territory. It is not enough for us as clinicians (or really anyone who needs to maintain a separate professional online presence) to create good practices and think that will be enough. We have to stay on our toes and educate ourselves about changes. It is crucial to have information about what is available in advance versus responding after the fact. I find it absolutely necessary to have other social media savvy mental health professionals to consult with.

Dr. Kolmes: I completely agree with Dr. Young that it’s essential to have other social media savvy professionals with whom to consult. It is hard to find other professionals who are venturing forth into social media with shared values and caution. I am very grateful for those with whom I’ve made a connection. I see people on the extremes: those who are highly critical and believe that any social media presence is de facto a dangerous thing that compromises therapy relationships; or others who are using social media in careless ways potentially compromising basic ethical principles. It’s hard to find professionals who are visible on social media but are applying a thoughtful, principled standard to such usage.

Providers of confidential services may want to carefully consider which Social Content they wish to merge in their Google Profiles. I opted to remove Twitter from my Google profile for my business, as I did not want people looking at my Google profile to see a list of my Twitter followers. You can do this by accessing the Social Content settings on your profile and then you can de-select content that you do not want added to your profile. I also disabled Google Buzz completely.

Dr. Young: Like Dr. Kolmes, this experience has me reconsidering how I move through the social media world and what sites I connect to each other. More recently Facebook is encouraging users to link to other external websites. We need to think before acting in such situations. We also need to continue to request that social media sites provide clear privacy policy information and settings.  I have also opted to switch from gmail.com to hushmail.com (which provides free and encrypted email services) for sensitive professional purposes.

I want to thank Dr. Young for taking the time to participate in this exchange with me and for alerting me to the People in Your Social Circle issue in the first place.

More and more sites are expanding the scope of their services to include social networking and sharing that their users never anticipated when they first signed up for the services. The latest such move is happening on Yahoo, where Updates will soon be broadcast to your Contacts, à la Google Buzz. You can find out more about how to opt-out of sharing on Yahoo, thanks to Kurt Opsahl over at EFF.org.

© 2010 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2010) People in Your Social Circle: Dr. Kathleen Young Chats with me About Social Networking Challenges for Clinicians. Retrieved month/day/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2010/06/07/people-in-your-social-circle-dr-kathleen-young-chats-with-me-about-social-networking-challenges-for-clinicians/.

This article is part of an online course: Digital and Social Media Ethics for Psychotherapists for 8 CE credits

DeeAnna Merz Nagel posted an entry today on the American Counseling Association’s blog entitled Is it okay to “Google” your client?. This is a great question, and a timely one, as it seems to be coming up with more frequency in both my professional circles and in my conversations with others who are using social media. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by a journalist who was writing a piece on the issue of therapists Googling their clients.

I’m reposting my comments from the ACA blog below.

These questions have been coming up frequently with trainees and colleagues with whom I consult. I believe that if you are a therapist who is using Google to obtain additional information about your clients, then this needs to be formally integrated into informed consent and become an explicit part of your treatment agreement.

Googling clients or reading their blogs without their awareness is a subtle way of entering into a multiple role with them. The APA Ethics Code cautions us against entering into multiple relationships which can impair our objectivity, competence, and effectiveness in our primary role as psychologists. While it may not seem obvious on the surface, consider how doing these things invites us to be voyeurs, investigators, or audiences to our clients outside of their sessions with us.

In my work with clients, I obtain consent when I’m going to share (or collect) information from a third party. As I recently shared in a Twitter conversation on this topic, I think that the internet is now becoming a sort of third party, with additional client data becoming so easily accessible.

I like Kate Anthony’s comment above about Googling clients being like following them home. The example I often give is that of donning a disguise and following them to a bar where you can secretly observe their behavior. It is one matter if a client invites you to view their online content and it becomes integrated into the clinical conversation in some way. But it is an entirely different matter if we do this on our own, without the client’s awareness. I expect that these types of boundary issues on the internet will soon be addressed by ethics codes.

To add to my comment, I appreciate Nagel’s recognition that there may be some circumstances in which it makes sense to use Google in your work with your client perhaps as part of helping her understand her online presence. This, of course, would be a consensual and negotiated clinical application of an internet search in the therapy relationship. I also agree with her that collecting this information without explicitly making it part of the clinical conversation potentially places the clinician in a quandary about what to do with the information. Will it get used in the therapy? Will the clinician keep it to herself but use it to inform clinical impressions and diagnoses?

Today on Twitter, Dr. David Ballard asked if anyone had questions for Dr. Stephen Behnke, American Psychological Association’s Ethics Director about psychologists’ use of social media. My question was whether new ethical guidelines are being developed for integrating social media into practice of psychology? I imagine the answer is yes, and I’m hoping that Google searches are one of the issues that will be addressed in social media policies and future drafts of our APA Ethics Code.

References

Chamberlain, J. (2010, May) Is it ever OK for a therapist to snoop on clients online? Retrieved June 14, 2009 from http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/features/2010/client-searches.aspx

Nagel, D.M. (2009, June 25) Is it Okay to “Google” Your Client? Retrieved June 25, 2009 from http://my.counseling.org/2009/06/25/is-it-okay-to-%E2%80%9Cgoogle%E2%80%9D-your-client/

Scarton, D. (2010, March 30) Google and Facebook raise new issues for therapists and their clients. [Electronic version]. Washington Post. Retrieved March 30, 2010 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032902942.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Zur, O. (2010, April 27) To Google or Not to Google…Our Clients? Retrieved May 11, 2010 from http://www.zurinstitute.com/blogs/index.php?blogid=15

© 2009 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2009) The Google question: Should therapists Google their clients? Retrieved month/day/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2009/06/26/the-google-question-should-therapists-google-their-clients/.