Thing #22

When I was a senior in college, Facebook was brand new.  While sitting around one of the computers in the library working on a group project with friends, one of my friends began talking about Facebook.  I had never heard of it before, so I began asking questions.  Shocked, she said “Carrie, what do you mean you’ve never heard of Facebook?  You’re one of my friends.  You sent me a message this morning!” She quickly pulled up her facebook page, clicked into “my” page, and the terrifying reality of “social networking sites” unfolded on the screen.  “I” had a page with photos of me and my contact information, including campus address, home address, and phone number.  “I” had hundreds of friends.  “I” was a member of tons of groups.  “I” was sending and receiving messages on Facebook at an alarming rate.  I logged into my school email account (this is back when Facebook access required a .edu email address), and my deleted mail folder was filled with “friend” requests, those offered and received.  My friends and I were shocked and horrified to realize what was going on.  I was disgusted and terrified at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do.  Someone was pretending to be me, and it was scary.  I didn’t even have the password to access “my” page to shut it down!  My boyfriend (now husband) was a first-year law student at the time, and he’s always been a no-nonsense kind of guy when it comes to being mistreated, so he was quick to jump on the problem.  He contacted Facebook on my behalf, but they refused to do anything about it.  Only when he threatened to sue them did they agree to shut down the page.  Their solution?  They permanently disabled my email address from being usable on Facebook.  I never discovered who made the page and deceived so many people.  For a long time I couldn’t have a Facebook page; later, they loosened their rules so that non-edu email addresses (including those of minors) could access Facebook, but I didn’t want any part of it.

With that experience as my first exposure to social networking sites, I immediately despised them.  I skeptically asked: What kind of “relationship” can you really have in an environment where the person you’re communicating with may not be who they claim?  Since then, I’ve become a little more open-minded about it…But it’s hard to recover from an introduction like that.  Sometimes, you just can’t forget first impressions.

While exploring the social networking options in this week’s thing, I saw that there are benefits to networking with people who share interests and concerns with you.  If a teacher from North Dakota (or someone who claims to be such a person) has a great idea about how I can enhance my students’ classroom experience, then I can be open to that.  But, I don’t think I’ll ever turn to social networking to develop or enhance personal relationships with friends.  I believe I’ll always be someone who would prefer a letter to an email, a phone call to a text message, and a real face-to-face conversation to online chatter.  Maybe I’m old-fashioned.  Maybe I’ll just always be skeptical.  Maybe I need therapy.  Who knows.  Haha