FACEBOOK revisited

Now, I have to admit that I LOVE Facebook. Now, I'm not an addict (that sounds hilarious to even write), but I use it to communicate with my students. You know, it's the whole "meet them where they are" thing. And here at Oklahoma State, 98% of the students I've taught (speaking specifically about the undergrads--I just get my grad students' cell phone numbers) use Facebook CONSTANTLY. So I began using it. But I've always been intrigued by the stuff that people will put about themselves on it--even when they know people look at it. I keep mine pretty inocuous, but some people don't know what TMI is all about.


It reminds me of a couple of things from my college days. I remember when I was going to school I liked some girl (I can't even remember her name, and I'm sure she never knew I was alive) and the school I was at had something on the library computers that you could use to look up anyone's schedule. I remember looking hers up and I made sure I passed her a few times a day. CREEPY. Then, when I was teaching at BYU-Idaho, they had a somewhat similar thing where you could look someone up and get their schedule and even see their ID picture. What did the students call it? STALKER-NET.

Isn't Facebook potentially the same thing? Yeah, I know that you have to approve someone to be your friend, but how many of these kids really pay attention? I have taught many of the student-athletes from here at OSU, and some of these guys get HUNDREDS of request A DAY to be added as friends. They just go through and click YES on everyone. It's alarming.

I remember one student here telling me, "Dr. Curry, come look at the pictures from this weekend. I've just posted them to Facebook." When I walked over, it had a picture of her obviously drunk with a beer in her hand. So I asked her, "How old are you?" She told me she was nineteen. And I said to her, "And here you are showing me a picture of you drinking? You have to be smarter than that."

She couldn't understand what I was talking about.

So today I came across this post from Terry Freedman that has a link to a YouTube video about Facebook. He then has some interesting comments about it. The video is below: