Some Things to Consider When Usi

Some Things to Consider When Using Facebook

Dr. Kathleen Crown
Director of Studies
Mathey College
Princeton University

Princeton’s Own Facebooks: A Brief History

As recently as a year ago, students arriving at Princeton University in September would receive Residential College “Facebooks.” These books featured rows of student photographs with phone numbers, room numbers, birthdays, and hometowns. The most interactive tool was a first-name index, designed to help you identify that cute guy (or girl) named “Jordan” in math class.

But the heyday of the printed facebook is now officially over. The Class of 2010 will arrive this fall to find that a free, on-line University Facebook has replaced most of the printed facebooks. You can check it out at http://facebook.princeton.edu, where you will find a personalized photo directory containing accurate data for everyone in your class. Its main purpose is to allow Princeton students to search for and socialize with one another, but it also has other interesting features such as P-Cards and My Groups. A paper copy of the Facebook still exists—The 2010 Freshman Herald—but we suspect it will be purchased mainly as a keepsake.

Facebook.com

Even before arriving on campus, most of you will have already established detailed personal profiles on commercial, on-line “social networking” websites such as Facebook.com and MySpace. Some of you may even have ventured into the public world of blogging, writing on-line journals in which you publish your thoughts (whether random or organized) on the world-wide web. These exciting new venues provide opportunities for you to express yourself, to make known what you are “Looking For,” to form friendships, to stay in touch with friends at other schools, to join groups of the like-minded, to write on each other’s virtual walls (instead of dorm-room whiteboards), and to share photos.

Who’s on Facebook?

You are a student at Princeton University. That means you are intelligent, and maybe means you have read George Orwell’s 1984. Read it again. Before you post anything about yourself on Facebook.com or any of the other online social outlets, consider Orwell’s characters, who watched TV and were watched in turn by Big Brother. There you are, watching all those folks on Facebook.com and MySpace. You know (or at least hope) that some of them are watching you, too. But who else is out there watching you?

Ø You should certainly expect future employers to check for your online persona. They will be looking you up, and they will find your Facebook.com profile. Maybe what you are saying today about your drinking or your sexual interests is not exactly the resume material you will want in front of prospective employers. Also, be honest on your profile. It won’t help your chances of getting that high-powered neuroscience research job at Columbia, if your profile, designed to impress the gender you are “looking for,” states that your career goal is to be an entertainment lawyer.

Ø Then there’s Princeton University. We might, unfortunately, see a side of you that we’ve never seen before. That said, while Princeton University does not generally monitor your postings on the Internet (or Princeton University’s Facebook), if any defamatory, threatening, harassing, or violent posting (particularly one that targets another individual) comes to the attention of a University official (e.g, an administrator, coach, or professor), it will be taken seriously, and the offender will be held accountable. Just a note on the University’s Department of Public Safety department and Facebook.com: As a matter of University policy, Public Safety is not authorized to use Facebook.com as a tool to conduct broad-brush or proactive inquiries into student activities. But members of that department (or another University office) may use Facebook.com when they need to gain additional information about a specific matter or investigation.

Ø And let’s not be too polite about this next group – there are bad people out there trolling the Internet looking for juicy photographs of, and information about, young people of the sort who are students at Princeton. You could help them with their search by taking out explicit classified ads in Pervert Weekly. Or you could just post all that same information on Facebook.com. The main difference would be, of course, that the information on the facebook might still be easily available to the next generation of weirdos, whereas print media can be less permanent.

Social Networking Etiquette, or “Netiquette”

So how do you use Facebook.com and other online networking in a way that doesn’t put you in danger (or lose you a job opportunity)? Be smart. Remember that this is social networking. So what is smart socially?

► Maybe offer a little less personal information. If you have deeply personal information to share with your friends, do it in person and save Facebook.com for photos of that great trip you took to Kenya last summer.

► If you really feel the need to meet new people online, then treat them as people that you do not know (because they are people you do not know). And consider carefully how you want to go about getting acquainted. It’s all about knowing who is in that computer screen peering back at you. Or at least knowing that you really don’t know who is there.

► Make sure you know exactly who has access your personal profile. Facebook.com can be viewed by anyone in your school, in your region, even your high school, depending on the settings you select. Princeton University’s Facebook is potentially more private, as your social networking pages are only open to other Princeton undergraduates. It’s true that faculty and staff can purchase limited access, but they may view only your photograph and some basic information. They cannot view your social networking pages. Even so, if you post something for all Princeton undergraduates to see, that’s casting a pretty wide net.

► Know exactly what your privacy settings are on Facebook.com, and what they mean. Is your profile open only to your friends? To all Princeton students? To everyone in your region? To friends of friends? Kevin Bacon? How many degrees of friendship do you trust?

► Be aware that Facebook.com, and other social networks, retain all the information you post on your website for an indefinite time, possibly forever. They also reserve the right to collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant-messaging services, and other facebook users. Be aware that they will use this information to target (or “serve”) you with what they consider “personally enriching advertising opportunities.” Also consider the risks you face from spyware, adware, and other malicious software, which presently infect one in 600 social networking pages.

What You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You

Online social networking can be a lot of fun, but it also involves significant responsibility. What you say online is not a secret and is not even limited to some small group of friends. You can be held responsible by Princeton University and even by the courts for what you post online. What you say about yourself may be unwise, but what you say about others also may have serious consequences.

Even email and instant messages between friends should be circumspect. Consider one of the most publicized examples – the Duke University lacrosse player who emailed hateful comments about a woman in the immediate aftermath of the alleged rape last spring. It was the unassailable fact of that posting–not the rape allegations alone–that prompted the University to immediately cancel the lacrosse team’s season and eventually to fire the coach. Be aware that what you say online can hurt other people besides yourself.

Wiping Clean the Slate

Perhaps you think it’s just a matter of cleaning up your online trail. You can say something outrageous and then take it down really quickly. You want a wild online persona for now, and you figure it can all be removed easily enough when you’re ready to be a boring old adult. Maybe there won’t be anything really incriminating to find when you apply for that internship in the spring or law school in a couple of years.

Or maybe it will all still be there, safely cached by Google.com or Facebook.com or by any of the millions of people who saw it. Be good to your future self, and think before you post. Find out what the process is for truly and totally removing your information from Google’s cache, and how long just that will take. And Google is not the only search engine or entity caching your data. What’s uploaded to the Net can be downloaded. It can be archived in a searchable form pretty much for the rest of your life—and sometimes even longer.

Summing Up

In sum, Facebook.Com is not some exclusive private party. Instead, it’s one that includes your parents, your future employers, Princeton University, maybe a future (or past) boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe even your own children and grandchildren. In reality, it’s a big public party that includes your friends, but also a lot of strangers of all ages and their friends. It’s like Alumni Reunions. So when you’re out there on The Street, with your name and your description of yourself plastered on your orange and black motif shirt, what are you going to be saying to all those people you pass on the online sidewalk?