A case against Facebook

I’ve been thinking of writing a long, well thought-out post about Facebook for a while, but it’s looking like you’re going to get an off-the-cuff one — can’t go breaking traditions now.

I would like to point out that I was an early adopter of this phenomenon. I first signed up for Facebook in the Fall of 2004, shortly after I started at Asbury College. At the time, Facebook was a college student connection service. You had to have a valid college e-mail address, and only certain schools were represented — first Harvard, then some of the larger universities, then small colleges. I remember some of the students being so excited when Asbury was added to that list, so I signed up then to see what Facebook was all about.

What I found was a site where you could upload a photo of yourself, tell what your favorite movies, music, etc. were, and connect with friends from other schools by writing on their walls. You couldn’t put up photo albums or videos, fight each other with zombies or even — brace yourself — play Scrabble with friends. Well this thing took off, first with photos, then video, then came what I consider the biggest turn in the Facebook story. The site found that once college students graduate and lose their e-mail addresses, they needed a way to stay connected. So they began allowing regular e-mail addresses to have logins for the site. Well that opened the site up to alumni, high school students and eventually the entire world. Now we have Facebook as we know it — a social networking program that connects you with people all over the world and lets you be notified about every single update in their lives.

My Facebook page has become almost a scrapbook of the last four years of my life. It has accounts of my ex-girlfriend, my job, my first trip to Disneyworld, my graduation, my college photography class and the 2007 Indy 500. There are embarassing pictures of me at parties that other people have posted and a video of me playing music. You can see my profile photos back to 2007, which include me shirtless on the beach, standing with my arm around Brian Regan or Victor Wooten, and wearing a tuxedo while riding a giant triceratops (true).

A quick glance at my home page tells me that high school acquaintance Vince is having time with God, Matt, a guy from Dunbar I spoke to maybe four times, is going camping this weekend, Geoff from college is considering Florida State University for grad school and former co-worker Lindsay hopes it doesn’t rain. A click on their names and I find out Vince works at Chrisman Mill (I should stop by and say hello, didn’t know he was working there), Matt just graduated with a civil engineering degree from Louisville and is REALLY into Lord of the Rings and Geoff is a fan of Jay-Z, Katt Williams and Alicia Keys.

That brings me (finally) to my point. There are a lot of knocks on Facebook in the media and in normal conversation — it is inhibiting face-to-face contact, it is looked at by employers, it is a popularity contest — but my issue with it is this: I think Facebook is encouraging a form of online stalking. I highly recommend to people that I talk about Facebook with to not have “friends” who aren’t actually friends. You never know what their motives are.

Here’s an example, and this is one thing that kind of brought this post on. Sunday night I was talking to a friend — in person — about Facebook and how it is used. This girl said that she is on the site every day, and she even uses it — I’m not making this up — to keep tabs on her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends. She said that one of them just started dating a new guy in Lexington, and it looks like it’s going well.

I was floored at how matter-of-factly she said that she does this on a regular basis and thinks that it’s normal. I told her, that is stalking. That is the definition of stalking — pursuing stealthily with unwanted or obsessive attention. And I couldn’t help but think, if she’s doing this and thinking it’s one of the benefits of Facebook, what are other people doing with not-so-innocent motives?

I talked to that girl while we were at the hospital visiting another friend who had been attacked by a jealous ex-boyfriend early that morning and nearly killed. I realize I’m starting to get a little extreme here, but this is the second reason I am writing this post. I have a legitimate concern about the ramifications of stalking on Facebook. It is a festering hole for jealous exes, some of whom are still hurting from breakups or infidelities. Imagine dating someone for two years, having him or her cheat on you, then seeing pictures of him or her out with a new him or her — kissing and carrying on (for the record, that’s not what happened in my friend’s situation). Those encounters were possible only rarely when you happened to run into the two out somewhere, but now pictures of these things are being posted on the internet — and you are being notified by the Web site that posts them. Can you see where that could cause some problems?

Now that I have ranted a little bit, I want to reiterate that I am on Facebook, and I like Facebook. I have a good time connecting with friends that I haven’t seen in a long time and looking at pictures of weddings and birthdays and graduations. I’m at the age where a lot of my friends are starting to have children, and I like that I can find out quickly when they are born and see pictures of the ultrasounds and the babies coming home from the hospital. I like that I have an aunt and five cousins on Facebook so they can get updates about new ventures in my life. But I make it a rule to not become friends with people that I don’t know or post anything that could make people upset or get me in trouble.

You never know who’s watching.