Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

"Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image does match with our ideal, Facebook can show a positive version of ourselves,” said associate professor Jeffrey Hancock. “We’re not saying that it’s a deceptive version of self, but it’s a positive one” (CNN Tech).

There has been a growing concern that our generation’s dependence on Facebook and other similar social media networks to determine our self-worth has reached unacceptable levels. How can we define ourselves as unique, interesting, artistic, clever, cool, etc. while differentiating ourselves from everyone else who might hope to get the same image across?

Facebook is formatted such that you can learn almost everything and anything you want about your connections. Naturally, the idea of such openness is intimidating to many, and privacy groups, like the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have come together and garnered some influence within the government (All Things Digital). What these groups might want to consider, however, is that companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are ultimately around to maximize their net income despite the efforts these organizations go through to convince you otherwise.

Ultimately, Facebook is not an inherent right but a privilege.

I admit that all of this sounds ominous, but we must not forget that there’s a bright side to it all. With a few exceptions, you, and no one else, have almost complete control, as a Facebook user, to control the content of your profile. It is up to you to determine which celebrity/athlete/artist pages to like, whether or not you want to share your education and employment specifics, whether or not you will keep other peoples’ posts on your wall and comments on your pictures, and even whether or not others will be able to access your pictures from your page. Finally, it is up to you to decide what picture will summarize your online presence. I’m referring, of course, to your profile picture, often the first thing you notice when you click through to your friends’ pages.

I took the above quote from Jeffrey Hancock from an article on CNN Tech. The story covers Hancock’s report regarding the correlation between Facebook and self-esteem in a study of 63 students (click here to be linked to the report itself). It turns out that subjects who spent time on Facebook returned more positive feedback about themselves than those who were either staring at a mirror or a blank computer screen during the allotted time (CNN Tech).

“For many people, there’s an automatic assumption that the internet is bad,” Hancock said. “This is one of the first studies to show that there’s a psychological benefit of Facebook” (CNN Tech).

Does the research speak for itself?

Either way, perhaps some of us should consider lightening up.

Is Your Facebook Clean?

In all of our discussions, I believe that we focused on who should be able to see our information, rather than whether or not we should be held accountable for posting it. Yes, we may want to keep our comments and pictures private, but if they should be made public, are we still responsible for them, despite the fact that they were posted with the expectation of privacy?

I believe that, expectation of privacy or not, a person has still made the information in some way available and should be held accountable. One may be arrested for crimes committed in the privacy of one’s home, and I believe that, similarly, one is responsible for information posted to what many forget is technically a public forum. I’m sure we’ve all heard stories about people’s Facebook pages costing them their jobs, or other such serious consequences. This may be the case for Dr. Joseph Kenan.

Dr. Joseph Kenan is the president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry. He advises family court cases in custody disputes—or, perhaps, that is what he used to do. “Lewd” photographs of Dr. Kenan were recently discovered on his Facebook page, leading many parents to challenge his ability to determine good and bad child rearing situations. Dr. Kenan claims that the photos and comments were made in jest and in no way reflect his real views or professional abilities.

At least one court commissioner approved his removal from a case, but at least one other said that his Facebook has no bearing on a court case. While we have yet to see how this will ultimately play out, what we can take away from this case is that it is far simpler in the long run to maintain a clean profile. Once content is uploaded, there is no telling who may see it. This is not a privacy issue, it’s a common sense issue.

Online Monitors

With so many online dangers for parents to be worried about such as online predators and cyberbullies, it makes sense that parents want a way to track their children’s online activities. According to the New York Times article "Now Parents Can Hire a Hall Monitor for the Web," new companies such as SafetyWeb, SocialShield, and MyChild now give parents the ability to monitor their children’s activities and even flags suspicious reportings. This provides busy parents and those that may not be computer savvy a way to understand their child and make sure that they are being safe online.

How do these tracking sites work? The companies charge $10 a month for subscriptions which begin with parents filling out a profile. The sites ask for the parents to fill in their child’s e-mail address and the family’s physical address. They then look through social networking sites to see if the child has any accounts. The sites will then monitor what the child writes and what others write about the child. The sites will then report back to the parent with a list of the child’s online activity, marking activities as safe, potentially dangerous, or red-flagged as dangerous. What exactly are they marking as hazardous? The sites look for key words suck as “kill” or “suicide” in postings. They also look for age differences between friends. However, these sites have a lot of loopholes and often mark things as hazardous that aren’t dangerous at all, such as being friends with an uncle or perhaps using language that the sites take out of context such as, “I could kill for a latte this morning.”

Are these sites crossing the line into children’s privacy? What if the parent was monitoring an adult child? What if someone used this site that was not a parent at all? I can see the potential for a lot of dangerous stalking occurring. I can understand the concern that parents have over the Internet and the worry that it draws not knowing how technology works well enough to monitor their children themselves. So in a sense, this could ease a lot of parent’s anxiety and even allow parents to trust their children more. But on the other hand, there are so many loopholes in the technology, that the parents may not be getting all of the information that they think they are paying for. What happens if the child uses another e-mail address to set up a social networking account? Chances are, these sites would never catch that activity and parents could be paying $10 a month to see their children’s “good” account. I for one do not think that these sites are worth what they are charging. I think that if parents are really concerned over their children’s Internet activities, they should learn how to use parental controls or do their own research on how to track their children’s online activity.

The other major concern of these sites is the invasion of privacy of the children. If the child is under 18 and it really is the child’s parents who are trying to use these sites, then I would say they are marginally okay. After all, the sites only inform parents of information that the child puts out online for anyone to see. If anything, this could be a lesson for the child of how what you put online can be accessed by anyone. But on the other hand, when things beyond Facebook statuses make it to reports, questions of privacy are brought up. While Facebook statuses are expected to be viewed publicly, things like e-mail exchanges are not. Concerned parents are not, I think that e-mail exchanges are private. If parents are really that concerned about their children’s Internet activity, then I think that they should be having a conversation with their child about what is and is not appropriate online activity.

Facebook Official

A new social phenomenon brought on by Facebook is people announcing their relationship status’ online. According to UrbanDictionary.com, a site that defines slang words and references that one would not find in a more authoritative dictionary, Facebook Official is defined as “The ultimate definition of a college relationship- when on one’s Facebook profile it says ‘In A Relationship’ and your significant other’s name.”

Why is it that Facebook users feel the need to share their relationship status with everyone online? Isn’t that personal information? How awkward is it for couples to announce their breakup online? Ever since the founding of Facebook, couples have had to seriously discuss the ways that they are defining their relationships. Facebook puts pressure on people to define certain aspects of their lives that was not previously discussed until information became public.
If a woman defines herself as “single,” does that give her unwanted attention from men and red flags to be hit on? If a couple goes out on a date or two, are they serious enough to declare to their entire online network that they are in a relationship? Before Facebook, couples would refer to this discussion as the relationship talk. Nowadays, a relationship talk is better known as becoming Facebook Official. The New York Times article “Married or Single: Is That in the Facebook Sense,” from February 2011, discusses some of the pressures of defining relationship status to the virtual world.

While I could understand wanting friends and family to be happy for you in your new relationship, or even the desire to announce that you are no longer single, don’t people worry about what will happen when their relationship ends? I cannot even imagine the humiliation of changing your Facebook status to single and having to respond to comments inquiring about what went wrong. Some things are better left private, and I think that relationship status may be crossing the line.

Related material to this post can be found here.

Should e-mails and letters have the same legal protection?

What we post on the Internet can last forever. With easy, free access to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Myspace, it is now easier than ever before to share our thoughts, photos, and personal information online. But should whatever we post online be able to be used against us? On the one hand, we may post information with the intention of sharing aspects of our lives with our friends, but on the other, without proper privacy settings in place, anyone can access our information, including law enforcement.

This brings us to question: can what we post online be used against us in the court of law? The answer to that question right now is “no”. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act is responsible for governing the surveillance of what we do online. However, this act was written in 1986, long before the Facebook era, making many believe that this act is well outdated. The New York Times 2011 article Should E-mail and Letters Have Equal Legal Protection? addresses the issue of updating this act to make it more applicable to modern technology. In 2011, it is rare for communications to occur via snail mail; hence, a lot of relevant communication for legal cases may be stored online.

Updates have been made to the act such as a fraud case considered last month in the United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Circuit. The judge ruled that law enforcement cannot access e-mail messages stored online without a warrant because the Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches, which may now be extended online.

This article brings up the issue of the law lagging behind fast-changing technology. Laws take time to be passed and put in place. Technology is advancing so quickly, that it is hard for lawmakers to keep up. Recent laws associated with technology are coming into place such as the law regarding telephone usage while driving. This particular law is easy to enforce because officers can visually see drivers breaking the law. But what about incidents such as online predators? Enforcing laws against online predators is a much more difficult task because there are no online monitors. Steps towards having officers monitor online activity would be a great advancement in prevention of online illegal activity.

Transparency: A Double-Edged Sword

When the WikiLeaks scandal first broke in any major capacity, it was all that anyone talked about for several weeks, pretty much right up to the point when Julian Assange (see image) turned himself in to the British government. Granted, WikiLeaks is far from silenced – isn’t that right, Bank of America? Are you still worried? It is just momentarily quiet. I think that, before the next trove of secrets is released, we should take this opportunity to revisit the issue at the heart of the WikiLeaks scandal: transparency, in case that wasn’t perfectly clear. (Yes, that was a pun. I hoped you enjoyed it.)

Everybody likes to have their secrets revealed to the rest of the world. Oh, wait. That’s not right. Nobody likes to have their secrets known by anybody. That’s why they’re secrets. (I hope you’re reading this, Mr. Assange.) The word secret means, specifically, “not open or public; kept private or not revealed.” In other words, secrets are just private, sensitive information. And it seems to me that people need to be a bit more sensitive about sharing their private information. That’s right. I’m looking at you, Twitter. You too, Facebook.

Who really wants to know what you are doing, moment to moment? Very few people; just take another look at the number of followers you have on your blog or Twitter account. When you actually step back and think about it, do you really want all your ‘friends’ to know your current ‘status’? Probably not. The current state of individuals’ ultra-transparency sounds like heaven for stalkers, though. It’s also - as William Falk writes in The Week magazine - a heaven for “sophisticated marketing and research companies (who) are giving you the full WikiLeaks treatment through cookies, beacons, and other tracking devices that record your every move, like unseen spies…they can record your every keystroke on the Web.”

Chilling, no? Just keep that in mind as you are punching in your allotted 140 characters for your next Twitter post or typing in a status update. Or instead, you could use your ability to stay silent while on the net and simultaneously spare the rest of us from having to read your latest revelation or activity on your social media of the moment. Maybe a little less transparency from the individual would be a good thing. After all, if it’s big enough news, we’re going to hear about it from WikiLeaks or some other organization anyway.

Photo credit: http://www.mediaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/julian_assange-2.jpg

Facebook, Twitter, and the End of Privacy

A sample of my facebook minifeed:

• Ian Isles just checked in at La Casa de My-Linh.
• Corey Wonderkidd: just had sex! LOL
• Phun Keedoc: Enjoyed the 1st day of the new year. Spent time with my momma, then battled alongside my dear lil Nik, hung with my SPC dance beasts (Switchstep & invent), watched so many amazing acts @ the Newstyle Motherlode fundraiser event incldg the beautiful & talented women of Mixd Ingrdnts. Naw, we didn't win but were in the finals against a crew of 5 very skilled young kids. No shame there. :) Yes, I'm smiling.
• Ian Isles: my dad, nonchalantly, recorded and showed me a video he took just now of my dog humping her bed.
• Jobu Cordoba has been tagged in 5 photos
  
• Taylor Shiells: So, Twilight has made me consider something: Does anyone else find the idea of love at first sight shallow and unromantic? What exactly is supposed to be endearing about loving someone without any intellectual connection at all.
• Lawrence Wong: I hate stepmoms

I remember when I first started a Facebook account 6 or 7 years ago, back when it was a rather small networking tool among college students. What I cannot remember is when exactly it became a social crutch or such a large part of my life. I sort of feel jealous of the small handful of people I know who have never even bothered with setting up an account, but apparently not jealous enough to get rid of my own.

In the last several years I saw Facebook grow. When it began, I only saw friends from school with profiles. Once it opened up to anyone over 13 years old, I started to see my aunts and uncles, professors, businesses, and even babies and pets with Facebook profiles. Moreover, although Facebook alone became a monstrous networking tool, it began to join hands with other extensively used sites like Yelp, Twitter, iTunes, and tumblr. Once the numbers of new applications grew rapidly, I was able to know where everyone was, what songs they were listening to and videos they were watching, what they were eating for lunch, what they just purchased with their credit cards, and who they were hanging out with.

Even the way in which people portray themselves and their lifestyles through Facebook status updates and Twitter seems to have evolved. In its early stages, "the minifeed" had raised some concerns. Facebook's way of notifying all of your friends of the moment you change your relationship status or publishing on their minifeed what you write on your friend's wall created a buzz of discontentment; it seemed a bit invasive. But perhaps we became accustomed to the invasion. Not only that, perhaps we even began to enjoy it by manipulating it. As my friend Jardy recently wrote in his own facebook status, "you can tell when someone has a new crush by how often they update their profile picture, facebook info, and status"

CNN featured an interesting article about the ways in which people have grown comfortable with airing their private business, which can be viewed here