Students question new Facebook policy

Let’s face it, everybody has a Facebook profile these days. A few years ago, the social networking Web site was used exclusively by students at Harvard University. However, it quickly expanded into what it has become today- a way for people all over the world to contact and keep tabs on each other. Facebook has revolutionized the ease of access to users’ personal information, which has caused many to question what information is appropriate to share and what information should remain private.

Several news stories have emerged in past years which have warned job applicants that their potential employers can see their obscene or embarrassing material, but younger students generally remain na’ve regarding the impact of any uploaded material on the Internet.

Users began questioning Facebook’s privacy policy recently due to a blog posting which illuminated a change in the Terms of Service. The new terms took out a clause which prevented the developers of Facebook from using and manipulating any users’ uploaded material, even after profiles were deleted. Many users joined online groups to protest the changes.

Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, clarified and fixed the problem due to the amount of criticism.

“Based on this feedback,” he wrote on the Facebook Blog, “we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

To protect themselves from joining Web sites which allow the distribution of uploaded text or media, users should make sure to always read the terms and conditions of use first. Users should consider using some strict privacy filters that Facebook offers if they plan to post provocative material.

The freedom of information that Facebook offers should urge students to choose their uploaded content wisely. A student never knows if his or her parents, teachers or potential employers could be looking at the pictures from last Thursday night.

Many of the Greek organizations at GCSU enforce strict guidelines concerning what is or is not appropriate to display on the brothers’ or sisters’ profiles. They are asked to censor pictures, mainly with alcohol references, from public view.
Randi Lobstein, a freshman sister of the Delta Zeta sorority explains.

“We can’t have any pictures with alcohol in our hands or around us, and we have to keep our statuses clean at all times,” Lobstein said. “There are people higher up in the sorority whose job is to look at our Facebook profiles to try and find us misbehaving.”

Alpha Delta Pi also censors sisters’ Facebook profiles.

“I keep my profile clean to maintain a positive image of my sorority. I also make sure there is nothing that my mom, who has a profile, would be embarrassed or ashamed of knowing about me,” Christine Podwoski, freshman sister, said.

Professors at GCSU are certainly no strangers to Facebook either. Dr. Stephanie McClure, a professor of sociology, makes sure to keep any unprofessional material off of her profile.

“I want to maintain a Dr. McClure self on Facebook,” she said. “That’s who’s there. Not so much my personal self.”

While professors most likely do not spy or “creep on” their students, some wisely do keep tabs on what students display to all of their Facebook friends.

“I definitely have some students who I thought of differently after I saw their Facebook,” McClure said as a warning that the students’ best academic interests lie in keeping a clean profile.

Sophomore Zach Hart has an interesting perspective on the effects and significance of Facebook in a college atmosphere.

“I came to college and did not have a Facebook and within a year I had 1,000 friends and pictures,” Hart said. “It has probably been the best and yet most distracting thing about my college experience. I have realized Facebook is a testament of our self-obsessed generation; we choose the best pictures of ourselves and make them our profile picture. We de-tag photos that we don’t like. When we get in a fight with a friend we give the ultimate insult and de-friend them, and inversely you are not ‘real’ friends until you are Facebook friends.”

Facebook today represents a general shift in the acceptability of social standards. Both Dr. McClure and criminal justice professor Jennifer Hammack predict that in the future, employers and society in general will adapt to understand the bleeding together of the personal and professional lives.

“There are some industries that understand that at 22 or 23 years old, most people have probably had sex, had a drink or been around something illegal,” said Hammack. “Not every industry is that way, but I think there are a lot that are. So if they see that sort of thing on Facebook, they might not totally discount [an applicant] from being a good employee or being hired.

“As a society, we are much more progressive than before and I think Facebook has done a lot to help that.”

Time will tell what the long-term effects of Facebook will be for the ever-learning young generation of Americans. But until then, they should be wary when tagging a status which provides way too much information or the pictures from that crazy kegger last Saturday.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 27 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry