Why so self-conscious?

Facebook. You say the word and everyone immediately knows what you're talking about, regardless of their age. Betty White, an 88 year old legend, even spoke of it in her monologue as host of this week’s Saturday Night Live. (It is how she got the gig in the first place so she needed to recognize it.) College students spend hours on it procrastinating that 16 page paper due in a few hours, adults are beginning to use it more to re-connect with old friends, and then there's the employers who use it to check up on people they could hire in the future or who already work for them. Facebook is something that is going to stick around for many years to come. I don't care what you say -- it's still better than Twitter.

Facebook has so many different uses that it’s clear to see why millions of people around the world have become what some would call, “Facebook addicts.” Pictures are posted immediately upon returning from vacations, statuses are updated to tell people what movie you’re seeing this weekend, and then there’s the group who fertilize their fake crops on their fake farms on Farmville (I’m sorry, I think that’s just a little too much). My question is, why are people so much more willing to share their personal information, such as their daily tasks and “favorites,” to everyone with access to a computer? What happened to keeping your personal life personal? Are we too nonchalant about what we’re putting out there for the world to see?

According to a New York Times article on May 8, adults ages 18-29 are actually becoming more aware of the information that people are allowed to view on their Facebook pages. “While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry.”

What has caused this abrupt change? Are people realizing that other people besides your “friends” could be looking at your pages and using that information against you? “‘Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,’ said Mary Madden... ‘Now you are responsible for everything.’” All this means is people rush to the computers on Sunday mornings to “untag” those pictures from Saturday night that were just too embarrassing and posts from friends that don’t seem too appropriate are also deleted.

People need to begin to take this seriously. People who have posted pictures of themselves blatantly underage drinking (which seems like more of the norm in colleges now) need to realize that there are people who are going to see them and you could risk losing a job because of that. We need to think about what’s going to happen in the future as a result of our actions now. Make sure you think about that when you post your pictures from this week’s inevitable parties. Just remember this when putting pictures up: “Would my Grandmother approve?”

(Photo obtained from public domain)