It really cuts in several ways, doesn’t it?

One: the fear sense, implied by “using”, as in “taking advantage of.” This leads us to teach these tools in order to help our students better survive a tricky world. Helping them not get victimized, as Janice notes. A defensive literacy. This includes levels of defense, from watching out for Twitterphishies to telling students to beware the social Web.
Literary spirit: Melville, The Confidence-Man.

Two: the social, cooperative sense, suggested by “opportunity” and “social.” Students are already engaged in contributing to this world. We can help them contribute more effectively. A digital citizenship literacy.
Literary spirit: Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.

Three: a developmental sense, rather than an introductory one. We’re helping students get better at something they already do. Social Media 205, not 101. There are deeper levels to this, too, like the nearly psychoanalytic one of making students reflect on something they do not so reflectively. Or, reaching further back, to Soctates’ idea of anemnesis, unforgetting knowledge already acquired – they’re learning in the social Web; we have to make sure that schooling doesn’t forget it for them.
Literary spirit: Plato, “Allegory of the Cave.”

Educators should use whatever medium that works. Social or otherwise, this is a mechanism. (Think: A car can be a 4,000 pound weapon.) It is not something that 1) we should fear and 2) we should teach our children to fear. We don’t teach our children how to drive because we fear cars. We teach them how to drive because we want them to drive properly… and defensively, indepedent on how others drive. Our responsibilities should be to teach them how to use social media (or anything that comes along in the future) because it is the right thing to do, not because we fear it (or that it is “using” them).

Remember, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.