Christine DeRienzo
CECS 5200
October 1, 2011
My Experience with Facebook
I fought joining social media for a long time. Mostly I fought it because I thought I was too old to get involved. I always looked at social media as being for teenagers or twenty-something’s. It was only after some of my colleagues were talking about it at work that I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
I must say I have been happier than not with my choice to join Facebook. I have really enjoyed re-connecting with people I have not seen in 25 years or longer. There are many friends I had in high school and college that live all over the country and we never kept in touch. If it was not for Facebook, I probably would have never caught up with any of these people. I like to see people that I graduated with that are already grandparents. Kind of makes me laugh…and feel old at the same time. In an article by Ellison, his research shows that online interactions do not necessarily remove people from their offline world but may indeed be used to support relationships and keep people in contact, even when life changes move them away from each other. This is exactly how I feel about the use of Facebook. With the world today being so mobile, Facebook is a way for us to keep in touch throughout all stages of our lives.
Although I believe that Facebook overall is a good thing for society, I also see the negative side of Facebook use. I personally have never been hacked on my Facebook page but I have plenty of friends who have. It is very un-nerving to me to see how easy it is for this happen. There is very little that can be done to prevent it and sometimes I just feel like it is a matter of time before it happens to me. I always make sure that my settings are set to maximum privacy. But, with all of the changes that Facebook makes on a regular basis without any kind of notification to the users, it makes it very difficult to keep everything at maximum security. I will continue to be vigilant in keeping my information safe and secure.
One other area that I see being a potential problem with Facebook is the check-in feature. Although it is kind of cool to see where your friends are or have been, if the settings are not right on your account, any person who is at the same place can see you check in. I had this happen when I first started using the check-in feature. I was at EPCOT with my family and checked in at Test Track, I then received notification that some other person, who I didn’t even know, was also at Test Track. That experience really made me uncomfortable. Since that day, although I changed my settings, I do not check- in anymore.
As far as Facebook in education, our district has a very strict policy about usage. Items posted on your Facebook site can be used to terminate employment if they are deemed inappropriate for educators. We have been told on numerous occasions to be sure our pages are secure and are set to only friends seeing our information. I guess this is a “cover us” kind of policy. The last thing a teacher wants is his or her students to see her photos on Facebook from her night out at the local bar. We are strongly encouraged to not friend any of our current students or students that we had that are still in the district. So, using Facebook as a means of communication is not an option for me.
As time goes on, I am not sure where Facebook will end up in education. I know from a personal standpoint, I will continue to use Facebook to keep in touch with people who live far away from Florida. I do see the benefit of Facebook outweighing the risks.
Reference:
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C. and Lampe, C. (2007), The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12: 1143–1168. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x
