Confirm or Ignore?

“My mom friended me today.” Not words you expected to hear five years ago, or even five months ago. Recently, the 40+ crowd has begun to invade Facebook, previously the domain of young adults, with the eagerness and awe of a baby-boomer learning to use the DVR for the first time. In their wake, they leave behind wall posts endearingly perfect in their grammatical construction and signatures with their full name (just in case you missed it next to their photo thumbnail).

The new crop of profiles hasn’t met with quite as much enthusiasm from undergraduates, however—and for good reason. There are certain pieces of information that one is happy to share with one’s friends, but not with one’s parents. Unfortunately, the arrival of parents on Facebook is only the most obvious manifestation of its growing lack of privacy. Facebook, as we knew it, is dying; by expanding into a global networking site for people of all ages, it has diverged from its original purpose as an online socializing hub for students.

Of course, this is all in the (somewhat) distant, gloomy future. For the moment, parents’ and adult relatives’ forays into Facebook can seem merely awkward. When the friend request comes, what to do? If you accept, they can see everything. Pictures from parties, your relationship status (leading to fun games like, “You’re married to your female friend? That’s a joke right?”), drunk wall posts and status updates, and photos of red Solo cups are now fair game. If you reject, they will be crushed and guilt-trip you, claiming that they are “hip” and can handle it. If you put them on limited profile, chances are good that in the short term they will have no idea what limited profile is and will be quite pleased, but before long they’re sure to catch on.

Encouraging parental interaction on Facebook waives the right to privacy so that people must alter their profiles. Certain things that could have flown when it was a college-only website are no longer permissible now that Mom’s looking over your shoulder and companies and schools are researching profiles. Profiles without some degree of self-censorship are becoming increasingly rare, but some people still aren’t cottoning on; when my brother interviewed a few prospective Harvard freshmen this year, he was surprised to see that they hadn’t bothered to restrict access to their profile, allowing him full view of information that did not reflect well upon them.

As our generation ages and we become parents, how will our relationship with Facebook change? Many will deactivate their accounts or restrict their profile to a name, bland picture and work/education info. Facebook will become for us little more than a phonebook with pictures. And, with the closing of the Facebook era, we will lose memories from our student experiences. Like it or not, many important social interactions do take place on Facebook—memories are encapsulated in tagged photos confined to the low resolution of Facebook albums, groups and events keep us connected to larger organizations, and who doesn’t love a flirtatious message chain?

But we don’t have to lose these memories. Email is as effective as wall posts, Gchat is way better than Facebook chat, and Picasa is a great way to share photos that don’t lose pixels when you upload them. And all of these are more private than gone-public Facebook. It’s not as if we have much of a choice anyway—parents and privacy may begin with the same letter, but that’s about where the similarities end.


Anna E. Boch ’11, a Crimson editorial comper, is a Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations concentrator in Winthrop House.