Facebook = Bad for Kids?

Facebook is bad for the world in general.

 

I recently allowed my son to have a Facebook account. He's only 8, which is 5 years too young according to Facebook's standards, but since he's my son, not their son, I using my own judgment on this one.

He has numerous cousins and family members outside of the country, and it's a cool way for him to see what they are up to, and vice versa. I have his password, and police his account regularly. He's not to accept any friends that he doesn't personally know. If he "likes" something that I don't approve of, he has to unlike it.

He's only had the account for a month or two, but so far so good. It helps him to stay in touch with family members and promotes his general skill and familiarity using computers, not to mention his writing/typing abilties.

If the account ever becomes a problem we'll delete it, but so far the experiment is working out.

I rather appreciate Facebook, because it has been an effective tool for getting me back in touch with a number of dear people who I had lost contact with. In particular, my first year on Facebook brought me back in contact with around 8 cousins who I hadn't spoken to since I was a kid. That's powerful stuff.

 

I use facebook a lot.

I have quite a lot of family friended along with good friends I don't get to see often.

I also use it a lot as there are a few groups for the discussion of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome which means I have easy access to links and information to pass onto my doctor. At least I will when we get the sodding printer working again....

 

I'm not on the Facebook myself but I sometimes look at other people's Facebook pages. My favorite thing to do there is press the back button and then find myself still at the same page instead of here at SP or wherever I thought I was going back to. It just makes me feel happy and content inside.

 

It's got positive and negative sides. Correct spelling and punctuation don't exist on Facebook

 

What is it about Facebook that's supposedly such a time sink? Seems to me like you're done at any given page about 90 seconds after getting there (and reading that your sweetheart is feeling good today, or that your buddy is hungover, or that your sister is planning on a salad for lunch). Do people check like 500 different pages a day or something, or do they just stare at a page waiting for an update? Or are they breathlessly composing their own updates for hours at a time?

Maybe a better question, for you FBers specifically, is: what exactly do you do there?

 

My aunts stalk people

There's a couple of games I'll check a few times a day, usually when having a sitdown break from something else.

Check out a few friends, maybe have a few conversations.

Kev currently has my phone as his bill hasn't been paid yet so I've been using to to send messages as well.

My mother made an account just to make a point of not using it.

If I find something useful or interesting online I'll pass it on to relevant parties as well. I like to help out other people in the groups I'm part of.

 

I don't spend more than a few minutes a day on Facebook, myself. I'll check status updates of friends and family like I'm scanning for interesting news articles, except that the updates tend to be so short that the headline is usually the update.

When I first joined Facebook I spent a lot of time being a voyeur... looking for people who I had lost touch with, becoming their "friend" and looking at their pictures to get caught up on their lives. But that mellowed out pretty quickly. In a few cases it has led to me reconnecting in person with people.

I don't play any games on Facebook. I connect in "invisible" mode so I'm not available for random chat requests (chances are I wouldn't have much time to chat, so no reason to enable this). I don't feel compelled to share every tedious detail of my day, like status updates on my laundry ("Hey world, looks like all my underwear are dirty. Guess what I'll be doing tonight!" -- just no). I tend to share big stuff only. So for me Facebook is a quick glimpse into people I know and care about, but probably wouldn't otherwise be keeping in regular contact with.

 

Interesting about the stalking/voyeurism ... I've 'stealth friended' a few people before - sent them a friend request without them having a damn clue who I was - and they've always accepted. That's scary to me, and would seem particularly so if you had youngish children.

@Marceror, did you 'stealth' the people you were doing the voyear bit with (I assume old flames and whatnot?), and did they heedlessly let you in, or did you take the direct "this is your old friend/flame Marceror, mind if I spy on you through the internet for a while?" approach?

I know people stalk exes on Facebook all the time, but it's always been a bit puzzling to me how. If you're the real you and you try to friend an ex who wants none of it, buh-bye. If you're instead a spook and friend them with an alias, they have to be rather stupid to accept, unless you're going so far as to impersonate someone else they know.

Never really did get that. Are people really so reckless? I have a feeling they actually are, given the fact that so many put their full names, dates of birth, places of residence, and phone numbers (even mobiles) out there. About the only thing I haven't seen is an SSN.

 

I even have on my visible page that I won't friend strangers but that doesn't seem to stop people trying

I'll get messages saying they saw something in a group and they thought it would be cool to be my friend. Somehow they don't see the humour in being told no

Even one of my mothers old schoolfriends who wouldn't leave me alone was creepy enough. People messaging insults and propositions as well.

It's like any other site, you just have to be sensible about what you display and to who.

One of my friends was on TV and ended up with over 6000 friends and it was always Kev and I getting the teary phonecalls when one of them would try and scam her, steal her details or start acting inappropriately

 

God, the internet can be creepy. I mean, these people have always been out there, but it's just now you're connected to them all through a hypertext transfer protocol.

 

I have never "stealthed" in the sense that I'm connecting to Facebook under an alias or anything. I only have 1 Facebook account, and it clearly identifies me with the name that anyone I've ever known would know me by.

And since I run under my name, and include family pictures and the like in my profile that I wouldn't want just anyone to see, I am very selective about who I accept as a friend. Not only do I have to know you personally, but I have to feel that there's some point in connecting with you. I've turned down many friend requests from old high school "buddies" (i.e. people I hung out with because they were there, not because I had an actual friendship with them) who I haven't talked to or thought about in 20 years. I don't care to see their status updates, so there's no point in being their "friend."

That said, there are still plenty of people who don't bother to make their profiles private, so there's no need to connect with them to see what they're up to. A lot of people allow "friends of friends" to see their profile, so that has opened a lot of doors for me look in on people.

An old fiance of mine has her profile all but completely private, but her husband makes certain parts of his profile public, so I've been able to see a bit of what she's up to. I did accept a friend request from an old high school girl friend, simply because we were good friends through much of high school, and knew her entire family, and thought it would be nice to reconnect with her, even if it's just through an occasional comment on her status, or whatever. My wife was okay with it, so why not. So that's an example of a more mutual sort of voyeurism.

All aspects of my profile are set to be private except to my direct friends, who consist mainly of family, close friends, and a few former or current coworkers who I consider to be friends and allies (otherwise my professional network is completely segregated on a different site). Really, I can't understand why anyone would make their Facebook profiles accessible to those they don't know. Then again, I'm a fairly private person, and have worked in IT so long that it's sort of second nature to want to lock things down as much as possible.