I have a love/hate relationship with social media, Facebook in particular. Back when Facebook started up, it was really cool to join and connect with all my friends, and looking for people I knew became a bit of an addiction. After awhile, this got old, and I actually went off Facebook for a long time, that is, until they opened it up so everyone and their mother could have an account, which I believe, may have been what caused everyone to leave Myspace.
A few years ago I also had a Myspace account, and that was the popular thing to do until all of a sudden Facebook just took over and everyone I knew deserted Myspace in a mass exodus. The cool thing about Myspace was that it was so much more private. You could have your own little slice of the Internet but not everyone had to know about it and it wasn’t under your real name.
The days of privacy and anonymity on the Internet are gone. No one uses Myspace anymore. Facebook is cool in a lot of ways—allowing people to keep in touch and share information very easily, but I personally feel that it has become far too invasive/pervasive. Sure, there are privacy settings, which I make use of as best as I can, but there is no way to prevent someone from posting an inappropriate comment on your wall or tagging you in an embarrassing photo for all to see. I love the networking aspect of Facebook—it’s like my own little database of pretty much everyone I know, but I don’t always want everyone to know every detail about my life.
I have lately been thinking of deleting my Facebook account and starting a new one. I recently found out that they store every action and piece of information that you have ever posted on the site—I discovered this unpleasant fact when a bunch of old messages appeared in my inbox that I had deleted long ago. This happened after switching over to Facebook’s new messaging system. Now they have it set up so you can’t delete messages or conversations at all.
Not cool.
However, I have amassed a great many contacts via Facebook and I don’t want to have to go through the process of trying to re-friend everyone again. I guess this is my dilemma. Silly, I know. No one ever used to have to worry about these kinds of things, but today your whole life is online and it’s not going to change. The virtual world and the physical world have become integrated and there is no turning back. I, for one, would like to stay connected, but not at the expense of my privacy. A lot of people seem to feel this way so it should be interesting to see if Facebook will remain so relevant over the next few years as it is today.
-Erika Hansen @erikathehansen
Over the weekend I went to a lecture by David Kirkpatrick, the author of the new book "The Facebook Effect." He addressed several of the same points that you make about privacy, inappropriate postings by "friends," and the potential relationship consequences of "unfriending" a person or outright rejection of a friend request.
ReplyDeleteAs Kirkpatrick noted, he/I are of a generation where the polite thing to do is accept the friend request. In his case, this frequently comes from strangers who he meets on his book tour. He said he then often has one of those head-scratching moments "who is this person and why do they (or I) want to be friends?”
Conversely, he feels that the "original" Facebook generation is much more discriminating about who it does or doesn't befriend. And then there is the old adage, "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" It’s one thing to be razzed in private for perhaps having too good of a time at a party. But friends who take your behavior public by posting online pictures of you in an inebriated state, and then refusing to take them down, borders on harassment.
Prof. Rob