Students facing Facebook's realities

Author: Kathryn Flagg

Be ware the perils of Facebook, warned Middlebury College Dean of Student Affairs Ann Hanson and Dean of the College Tim Spears in an August 31 e-mail outlining the pitfalls of the popular social networking website. The warning highlighted privacy concerns related to the website and urged students to become "savvy" Facebook users conscious of the broad audience that could access their online information.

The surprisingly prescient e-mail and a corresponding guide of online recommendations ironically came just days before the website saw massive updates that created individual "news feeds" - news wires that gather information from the actions of all of a user's friends and compile it on the user's home page. The feature proved wildly unpopular at first, inciting hundreds of thousands of users to sign petitions and join Facebook groups protesting the news feed, which was subsequently updated to expand user privacy controls.

At the same time, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, 22, announced that the site - originally available only to individuals with approved university e-mail addresses - will soon allow anyone with a valid e-mail address to become a user. Though, according to company spokeswoman Melanie Deitch, there is no set date for the expansion, current users are already concerned at the potential ramifications of the change.

The changing face of Facebook - and the almost immediate student backlash - prompted increased media coverage of the self-proclaimed "social utility." For Middlebury students the national debate is coupled with the College's informal advice pertaining to the website, and for the first time since Middlebury students logged on two years ago, the social networking website - and its over 9 million users - are at the forefront of the College's collective administrative and social consciousness.

The College's e-mail and online recommendations were prompted, said Spears, by "a growing awareness of the problems for students" that Facebook can cause.

"We live in a different world now and information can travel widely and quickly," he said. The "friendly advice" distributed to students was meant, Spears said, to keep the community abreast of the potential pitfalls of the website.

Spears maintained that though Facebook is available as much for faculty and staff as it is for students, the College's recent interest in the website is fueled by the desire to keep students informed. "We're not interested in going out and trolling for possible infractions," he said.

In widely documented instances, content posted on Facebook by students at other universities has influenced hiring decisions after college or resulted in disciplinary actions. Athletes have been disciplined for posting inappropriate photographs, students have been ejected from dormitories for discussing underage drinking and a freshman at the University of Oklahoma was investigated by the Secret Service last fall for posting a comment reading, "We could all donate a dollar and raise millions of dollars to hire an assassin to kill the president and replace him with a monkey."

In light of such incidents, a page linked from the Dean of Student Affairs' website encourages students to "think carefully" about the information they choose to publish on the website. "Use common sense when publishing anything on the Internet or visiting other web sites," reads the colloquial website, "and don't assume that everyone you will meet on the web is a rational, law-abiding citizen who has your best interests at heart."

Facebook, however, is not without its benefits, stressed Jason Mittell, assistant professor of American Studies and Film and Media Culture. Mittell, himself a registered Facebook user, was quick to address the emerging opportunities that technologies like Facebook afford users.

"I was just sending a message to a former student," he said during an interview with The Middlebury Campus. And though Mittell does not use the site "daily or even weekly," he believes Facebook presents an important networking tool, one worth utilizing and exploring. "Especially teaching in Film and Media Culture, networking is so important," he said. "This is where people network now, on Facebook or MySpace or these types of pages."

Mittell, for example, has utilized Facebook to make contact with Middlebury alumni - a contact that provided, in one instance, a potential internship for a current student.

Mittell, who describes himself as "one of the more wired faculty members," uses blogs, wikis and the College's Segue network commonly in his courses - and Facebook and its inherent questions of privacy and the Internet are just one facet of the wired classroom common at the College.

"For a lot of us who teach with technology, a great thing is that students feel like what they are creating is not just for a closed classroom," said Mittell. "They post it online and anyone could stumble across it. For me, that means they have to think about what they're writing in a different way."

This awareness of digital and physical identities is, according to Mittell, a worthwhile lesson for students. "I like the College's guideline's [for Facebook]," he said. "It's not saying, 'don't use this stuff.' It's saying, 'use it, but think about it and think about what it means to represent yourself.' It's a really good lesson that's applicable beyond just this one website."

Spears, like Mittell, acknowledged that the site has "immense possibilities and great potential."

"We don't want students to think we're coming down on Facebook," said Spears.

Spears indicated that Facebook is a tool with great forward qualities - one that should be used carefully. The danger lies in the illusion of control that the site projects. "Facebook has the illusion of being self-contained … and therefore insulated from scrutiny," said Spears.

Given the site's availability to faculty and staff - as well as technology-savvy potential employers - the content posted by Middlebury students remains surprisingly questionable. Popular groups include "If you can get into this club, cheers, welcome to homebase" - a group for purportedly enabling sexual encounters that counts over 200 Middlebury students as members - and "Middlebury Drinkers." Individual profiles often include explicit references to sex, drugs and alcohol, as well questionable photographs.

"I'm not that interested in looking at my current students or other students on campus," said Mittell. But the professor, after stumbling upon profiles, admitted being a "little uncomfortable with what [students] are putting up."

Considering the amount of press the website has achieved, however, some administrators hope that students are more savvy within the social networking circle. "I think there has been so much press about this, that students are starting to realize that posting a photo of them doing something 'risqué' as an undergraduate, may not be something that they feel the same way about when they are out of school," said Hanson.

For Molley Kaiyoorawongs '09 the changing face of Facebook prompted a more drastic response. Rather than deleting embarrassing photographs or tweaking her privacy settings, the sophomore chose to deactivate her profile. She joined as a freshman. Facebook was, she said, "a rite of passage," a privilege that came with matriculation. Kaiyoorawongs contended that privacy had little to do with her decision to delete her account, but rather that changes in the culture of the site - the decision to include high school students, for instance - took the fun out of "savvy stalking."

On life after Facebook, Kaiyoorawongs admits that she went through withdrawal - for a few hours after deactivating, that is. "Now I feel so much more wholesome," she said. "I, ironically, feel more social." Facebook, she said, is a central part of "the college experience," but she
admitted she wasted a good deal of time on the website, and contended that in the end, Facebook was a poor substitute for genuine social interaction.

"The original motive of keeping in touch with high school pals is dumb," she said. "If people say that's why they don't deactivate, it's an excuse and it's a weak one. The fact of the matter is, if Facebook is the only way you keep in touch with those people, then you don't really have much of a relationship anyway."

Facebook, since its February 2004 launch, has grown from a collection of elite university networks to become the seventh-most trafficked website and the number one photo-sharing site on the web. The site, over nine million users strong, now claims more than 40,000 regional, work, college and high school networks. At time of press, the Middlebury network included 4,752 individuals.