Friend Me Later
Facebook and its Social Power
One Friday afternoon, at an average yearbook committee meeting, we stalked our peers’ Facebook pages. The thing about yearbook is that you need pictures, and our image library was getting fairly scarce. Desperate, we
turned to social media to find more pictures of students in their natural habitat.
“Are you sure this is OK?” a friend of mine asked.
“Eh, sure. We’ll ask them later.” I responded.
As the period bore on our nonchalance slipped into complete indifference. Instead of searching for usable photos we were digging up funny pictures of old friends and looking up the names of people we used to know. Some gems were funny enough to show the residing teacher, an approachable 28-year-old whom many felt close enough to call a friend. He’d look at a funny face or a screenshot of a memorable online conversation and say with a chuckle, “I don’t need to know everything about your lives.”
Which isn’t to say he didn’t take part in the fun, too. He showed us an amusing family photo of himself and his siblings and some pictures of him as a child making superhero poses. When asked if we could friend him on Facebook after graduation, he said, “People have asked me that, but no. You can try, but I’ll never accept it. I have pictures on here from way before I ever knew I was going to be a teacher.”
That got me thinking about what I’m comfortable with sharing online to an audience that I know personally. I only recently became comfortable with adding certain members of my family on Facebook. How would I react to someone of authority looking through my photos and reading years-old conversations with my friends in the comments? I’ve had the opportunity to add old teachers I was close with on Facebook before, but I never did. Why?
I asked some of my friends if they would let a teacher friend them on Facebook. The response was a wide “maybe, depending on the teacher,” and one said that it wouldn’t so much affect what he posted, considering he was
already close enough to the teacher to add them. I kept in mind that a few of these friends had expressed anxiety over their online privacy before, going so far as to change their names on Facebook so colleges and other figures
of authority wouldn’t find them.
That got me thinking about what I’m comfortable with sharing online to an audience that I know personally.
As of July 2015, Facebook is the most popular social network by traffic, with an estimated 900 million visits per month. Facebook allows users to follow the activity of their Facebook “friends” — status updates, pictures, and
other kinds of information, like their relationship status, place of employment, and education.
Users “friend” other users by searching their name and sending them a friend request. It allows users to connect with friends and acquaintances, form groups based on specific interests, and get updates from larger entities
such as musicians, news sites, and more. Users have the ability to follow what they want and control who follows them.
Out of the users I know, some laud Facebook for its ability to keep connections, while others have abandoned it completely to avoid unnecessary distractions. Most users, however, have Facebook accounts simply because of
the convenience (classmates share homework, friends invite other friends to events) and that there isn’t an equal alternative — it’s better to have an account that connects to everyone else than to start all over on a site that no one visits.
When it comes to security, users for the most part have control over who sees their information (at least in their friend list) — it’s all decided by their privacy settings that they control. This serves to protect users from predators,
which are a real danger on the site. Most friends of mine only allow their accounts to be accessed by mutual friends — this is what allowed us in yearbook to find photos. The most that is visible to everyone else in that case
is their profile picture and cover photo, but this can vary from person to person. However, any lapse in judgment can be damaging — if a user posts problematic statuses or pictures of themselves and doesn’t have strict privacy
settings, it could ward off potential employers or other important figures. Even if the account doesn’t affect anything official in a user’s life, it could lead to simple embarrassment, which can hurt just as much.
The value of Facebook, from my perspective, is the sacred ability to keep in touch. As situations change, we lose track of old relationships, but Facebook allows us to stay connected even in a minimal way. Even if you’re not chatting or tagging them in photos you’ve taken, you can see how they’re doing in small ways. They might post a picture of a new dog, or announce what school they’ve gotten into. That being said, there’s always more information to be found. My account is used mainly to interact with close personal friends, but an acquaintance is just as likely to stumble upon our inside jokes devoid of context and think less of me. And while it’s not necessarily likely, anyone I friend on Facebook can go through my history on the site, digging up old and possibly embarrassing pictures or posts I’ve forgotten about. That’s why adding someone on Facebook is a serious transaction, and has the power to alter the way others see you. Who should I give that power to? Friends? Neighbors? Coworkers? Family members? Teachers? It’s something I try to consider, and I’ve rejected friend requests because of it. That’s why I don’t blame my teacher for keeping his social media private — he knows what power it has and acts accordingly.
Elsa Brown is a freshman at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. This piece was originally published here.
