Facebook: Friend or Foe?

There’s no getting around it, Facebook is here to stay. Facebook has become the greatest phenomenon of our time, following hot on the heels of the invention of the Internet and the answer to all our questions: Google. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and three others launched the site from Harvard University, as a way for university friends to stay in touch with one another. Since this time, Facebook has grown at such an unbelievable pace that six years later, a staggering 500 million people worldwide now have Facebook accounts. According to a recent Time Magazine article (May 31, 2010) more than one in four people who browse the Internet, have a Facebook account and return to the site frequently. Facebook dominates the social networking scene, and leaves in its wake, other social networks such as MySpace, Twitter and Linkedlin.

In the USA and Canada, over 40 percent of the population has a Facebook account and Australia is not far behind with over 30 percent of Australians with Facebook accounts. For many people, Facebook has become a ‘second home’. According to Time reporter, Dan Fletcher, Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of information with Facebook each month and 1 billion unique and very personal images are added each week! With over 48 billion unique images, Facebook holds the world’s largest photo collection, which is for all intents and purposes, shared with millions of others. Yes you can untag your name, if you find an unflattering image of yourself that someone else has posted on Facebook, but there’s not much more you can do to remove it.

Social networking has taken on a ‘life’ of its own. Gone are the days of face to face meetings with friends, now, it mostly happens, rather ironically in a ‘faceless to faceless’ world called Facebook. Some critics would go as far as saying that Facebook is not really a social networking site as much as it is an ‘anti-social’ network. ‘Isn’t it ironic…..don’t you think’, sings Alanis Morisette and she could very well be singing about Facebook, because it’s the one place where you can have hundreds of “friends”, who aren’t really friends at all. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that Facebook is a wonderful way to stay in touch with real friends, far-flung friends and family but equally, it poses a potpourri of potential problems.

So what are some of the problems and pitfalls that come from using Facebook and what can you do as a parent? The list is long but here are some of the major concerns and more importantly what parents can do to better educate their teenagers about Facebook. As a parent, I know there’s a natural inclination to want to ban the use of Facebook, for all of its problems and issues, but seriously it’s not the answer. Like most things in life, young people have to learn for themselves, sometimes through trial and error, with lots of guidance from caring parents, the most effective way to use this form of communication.

I would like to stress at this point, that like all forms of communication, social network sites are not dissimilar to other written forms of communication such as email, text messaging, tweets and the like, in that, there are polite and socially acceptable forms of communicating and there are rude, anti-social, disrespectful, illegal and defamatory forms of communication too. It’s important that parents discuss basic social etiquette of written communication and encourage young people to reflect beforehand rather than regret afterwards, what can’t be undone.

Teenagers can be very impulsive and write comments that can be hurtful, upsetting and in some extreme cases, bullying or defamatory. Recent tragic events of youth suicides have stemmed from postings on social network sites and the consequences of unthinking, thoughtless comments or photos or video can be devastating to individuals and their families and friends. Young people need to learn the basic skills of social responsibility and the possible consequences of irresponsible behaviour and actions.

Teenagers should take great care to not share too much personal information in their ‘public profile’. Anyone who uses Facebook is leaving a digital ‘footprint’ that can live forever on Facebook. Once something has been posted on the site, it’s out of their control and can be copied, pasted and forwarded to others. So called ‘friends’ can suddenly become their worst enemies.

Parents should set rules about what should and should not be posted on Facebook; no one wants to have something like a compromising photo or comment to come back to haunt them, months or even years later. Similarly, it would be wise to talk to your son and daughter about ‘time limits’ and insist that they keep within these set limits. Facebook can be addictive and many young people will spend in excess of four hours a day on Facebook. Do the maths; this is far too much time being spent on questionable ‘conversations’ that could be better spent in the real world on more productive activities.

Young people should be made aware that it’s not just their ‘friends’ who go onto Facebook to see what’s going on in their world. Unfortunately there have been hundreds and probably thousands of people around the world who have lost their jobs because of careless, rude, crude and derogatory comments made about co-workers, bosses and the organisation with whom they work or photos and comments which compromise the character of the employee. Employers will often search the profiles of prospective employees to establish whether they are the sort of person that they would be happy to employ. Parents would be wise to discuss this possibility with their teenager.

Your name and photo are always publicly viewable, and even though it’s possible to limit who sees all of your personal information, Facebook has a bad habit of changing its privacy settings. This means that the onus is on the Facebook users to reset their privacy settings. Parents should sit down with their teenager and go through the privacy settings on their Facebook account to ensure that the strictest privacy settings are in place. Unfortunately, even with these privacy settings, it’s possible to ‘hack into’ someone else’s Facebook account, so for this reason alone, young people should be circumspect about what they post on their site. Facebook continues to find ways to share individual person’s details with commercial third parties. It’s no accident that more and more ads appear as you use Facebook.

‘Time out’ or closing the Facebook account can be a last resort measure to better educate your son or daughter or to protect them. Blocking people, who have not done the right thing, of have shown themselves to be untrustworthy might be an effective way to minimise potential problems and avert a ‘war of words’ which seems to be part of the norm of ‘soap opera dramas’ that unfold in the world of teenage life.

Remember that young people need guidance and advice. Never assume that they can sort out all of their own problems. At CCS we take the matter of educating each child on appropriate social etiquette in the real world as well as in that other world of the social networking very seriously. Much of what happens on Facebook, happens in the privacy of your own home, but I have noticed increasingly with the use of sophisticated, web enabled mobile phones, that students are accessing Facebook at all times of the day. This is one area where the School and all families should work in concert to better educate our young people.

The fact is that people like to share, how else can you explain the phenomenal growth of Facebook? What our young people need to realise and understand though is that there’s a difference between sharing with ‘real friends and family’ and sharing personal information, photos and stories that will be used and abused by others. Always err on the side of caution and remember: everything in moderation, with a good dose of common sense, a healthy social responsibility and respect for self and others and the pitfalls and perils of Facebook may be averted or at the very least minimised.

Whether Facebook is friend or foe, largely depends on how people use Facebook. In the end, it boils down to who uses it and what the purpose of using Facebook is. Staying in touch with real friends and family members is a great use of Facebook, which can bring much joy and delight but like most of life there is a polar opposite - a dark side if you like - not just to Facebook but to all forms of communication. Used wisely, Facebook is a real friend, used unwisely, Facebook is your worst nightmare! Ultimately, you decide.