OXFORD City Council is making a wise move by monitoring social networking sites Twitter and Facebook ahead of May Morning in a bid to learn how many peope might be planning to jump off Magdalen Bridge.

But it shouldn’t get too carried away embracing social media because it may ultimately prove counter-productive.

This year there will be no closure of the bridge for the first time since 2005. There are fears of a repeat of six years ago when dozens of people mangled themselves on the bottom of the Cherwell.

Since 2005 we have seen an explosion in sites such as Twitter and it does offer the council, which is overseeing authorities’ planning this year, a chance to gauge what sort of groundswell there is among the IT literate about plans to jump.

The council can then try to tailor its response appropriately.

However, it should be careful about how it uses the sites itself to put out messages about safety.

If it immerses itself in Twitter too much, it has the danger of coming across as trying-to-be the ‘cool’ teacher so its warnings are then ignored. The other danger is that if the ‘kids’ think ‘mum and dad’ are watching their online messaging, they are likely to stop tweeting any information that could be of use.