A Realistic Look at Facebook and MySpace
Instead of parents always saying “no” let’s try to find a happy medium.
Published: December, 2006
Lots of advice about how to stay safe on social networking sites involves the words “no,” “never,” or “don’t.” Let’s try a different tack.
MySpace and Facebook are compelling places to stay in touch with your friends and rekindle old relationships, but if you’re going to use these services there are a couple of things you should be thinking about in order to protect yourself, your family, friends, and school.
1. Remember: Neither Facebook nor MySpace is running their site as “not-for-profit social services.”
They haven’t put up a playground solely for you to have fun, or just to be nice guys. Both sites are mega-businesses and, in part, their business relies on knowing a lot about you so they can attract the right advertisers to target you. For example, an advertiser might want to reach kids in a certain geographic area, or ones who like a certain type of music. Conversely, they can aggregate facts about you and deliver that information to their clients. It’s not necessarily a terrible thing, but it’s something you need to be aware of.
2. Beneath it all, Facebook and MySpace are big databases, not just a bunch of blank pages you get to decorate.
Underneath everything that you fill out lives a big, huge database. That’s why it’s possible to do a search on people who meet certain requirements say, a blond eighteen-year-old from Vanderbilt University. If you’ve filled in the profile questions on these sites and haven’t specified any privacy options, then your information is now part of this searchable database for anyone to search on.
3. Both sites have privacy options to protect you.
Before you fill out your profile, read the options and think about ways to keep your friends in and other people out. You can specify what’s to be done with your photos (can other friends pass them along?) and your profile (viewable by everyone or just a select few), to name a few options. I suggest using the options that allow only those you know for certain are your friends to see your profile information. Others, not in your group, will only be able to see any photo or top line information you post.
4. Should you use photos?
Pictures may inadvertently be seen (and passed along) by the wrong type of person. Many students have opted to use cartoon characters, icons, or scanned images as their photos to avoid being stalked or harassed by strangers. And don’t put up any photos or your friends without telling them. They may not want the photo displayed, so be a good friend and respect their privacy.
5. What about name, address, school, and other revealing information?
Experts have lots of different opinions about whether you’re safe when you give out this information, but chances are that you’re going to want to list some of these things because they are part of what defines who you are. A few suggestions:
Don’t post your address. Even with privacy options turned on, the more people with access to your address the less safe you and your family will be.
If you’re using your school’s name in your profile make sure that you understand your school’s policy about what you can and cannot say in cyberspace. For example, if you use the school’s name and say something that might be seen as disruptive, they can–and probably will–confront you. Use your school’s name in a way that they’d be proud of, not ashamed. As for your name? I’d be inclined to just use my first name or a screen name so that only my friends could identify me.
As for your age, if you’re under 14 (MySpace) or 16 (Facebook), you do not belong on these sites. That’s the site’s policy and it’s a very reasonable one. You must fill out your age in order to be approved to be on the site.
6. How hard is it for your information to be shared against your will?
If you use the privacy options and someone goes to look at your profile they’ll still be able to see your photo, age, and city/state of residence on MySpace. The other parts of your profile will be hidden.
7. What if I want my profile deleted or someone is bullying me?
Complaining to MySpace and Facebook doesn’t always do much, mostly because there’s always a shortage of humans to monitor and mediate requests. However, they are trying hard to honor all reasonable requests for removal of nuisances and removing profiles.
8. Can I put music and art on my profile page?
You can’t post materials that aren’t yours, which often means you can’t post music and artwork you may be “borrowing” for your profile page. Record companies are starting to crack down on copyright infringement of music. (If you’re using music or artwork that someone else holds the copyright to, you may be depriving them of their livelihood and violating copyright law.) MySpace, for one, has publicly stated its intention to begin cracking down on these behaviors.
9. Is it safe to join a group on these sites?
Groups can be tricky, because they get polluted by people who don’t belong in the group. If you are in a group with your friends on these sites you must make sure that it’s limited to people you know and trust. Remember, it’s easy for someone in a group to pass your profile information along, so don’t say anything that you’d be in trouble for if it were to get out beyond the group.
10. Can my teachers, parents, etc. really see what I post on these pages?
If you’ve chosen to privacy protect your profile it makes the task more difficult for non-invited subscribers to see you, though they can still see your photo, name, address, age, and school. Also, since it’s relatively easy to establish fake accounts on these sites, teachers, parents, and administrators can (and sometimes do) this in order to help monitor the situation.
11. Read the terms of service.
Look at what Facebook says about the content you put on your page, for example. It says you grant them “an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.” That means that Facebook has a right to use what you post while you’re a member of their site.
12. Don’t think for a minute that things you say and show are private.
A right click, a save page to a file, or a screenshot, and anyone with access to your page and can make it exceedingly public. If you’re not proud of the person your page represents then change it immediately.