Panic! at the Facebook

I could not help but chuckle a little at quite a few of the articles this week.  Some of them seem to be written from an adult/scientific perspective.  It calls to mind an image of a crazed scientist holding Facebook out at arm's length, disgusted, and carefully placing it under a microscope to have a closer look at it.  I can just imagine: "WOW!  Look at all of those young people gathering around Facebook!  I must observe them!"

My imagination is running away with me here.  I feel like "adults" (meaning those probably 40 or 50 +, since I'd like to think that everyone in this class considers themselves to be adults!) are horrifically frightened by the very notion of social networking and are frantically trying to understand this "teen fad" at the same time.  It is just as Danah Boyd puts it: like novels and rock 'n roll before it, social networking is a fad primarily embraced by the younger generations.  Some people beyond the young adult stage have definitely embraced things like Facebook, and I'm sure it is to their benefit.  One of my former English professors, for example, makes avid use of Facebook applications and Second Life, and blogs about his experiences, good and bad (I can't speak on his behalf, but I think he would say that he is definitely amused and enjoys the whole social networking and Web 2.0 experience).  I'm worried by people who take it, in my opinion, to an extreme in which these sites have to be banned, as Joanne Barrett has done.  She does appropriately worry at the end of her article that students will still find a way to go online anyway and expose themselves inadvertently to predators, but there are countless risks in the world beyond what Facebook and social networking can do to a child.  All you can do is continue to educate children (and everyone) about the impact of digital footprints and hope that they learn something from it.  And parents should be aware of what their children are doing on the Internet but not to an oppressive point.  There is no way to absolutely restrict children from using the Internet and so it should be embraced and not held out at arm's length.

I WILL say, though, that we all should truly be careful about what we do put out there.  Anyone can see anything if you don't take precautionary measures.  I would especially warn anyone who works with children or works in the public eye to guard their online profiles carefully since there could be some damaging content (you wouldn't want your child to find pictures of you at a wild university party, would you?).  But these are precautions that should be taken in any aspect in life, not just in social networking.

As for libraries and the information profession, I love that some libraries are really trying to embrace things like Facebook.  I particularly enjoyed Hennepin County Library's Facebook page, especially their catalog search feature.  I think as long as Facebook or MySpace pages are maintained, just like any other Web 2.0 application, then they can be powerful tools for library outreach.  For another good example of the information profession in social networking, has anyone seen JSTOR's Facebook application?  It allows you to search JSTOR from Facebook!  It's not a widely-used application, but I think it's neat!

To sum up, I would say that everyone needs to stop treating social networking as something to be afraid of and try it out, but as with anything else in life, exercise discretion!