Between reading the article earlier this week in The Herald about Brown admission officers trolling Facebook to scope out applicants ("Admission officers poke around Facebook," Sept. 10) and Facebook's announcement that it will allow non-users to search for users' profiles on Google, I've arrived at an unfortunate conclusion.
Facebook must be destroyed.
Well, okay, that might be excessive. But Facebook is quickly becoming much more of a detriment to the academic lives of young students than a utility. As proof, let's weigh the pros and cons.
Con: Facebook is an electromagnet for public stupidity.
This article was partly inspired by an experience I had this summer as an RA for the Summer@Brown program. In case you didn't know, thousands of high school students descend on campus every June like a buzzing swarm of locusts, all of them itching to Facebook-friend everyone they meet, all of them blissfully ignorant of the fact that all the information they post on Facebook is public.
So you can imagine my surprise when one of my high school residents, who had recently friended me on Facebook, posted the event details of an upcoming party. The party's announcement promptly appeared in my Facebook news-feed, so I knew within minutes that my residents were planning to drink straight Karkov and grind on the stripper pole in Sigma Chi's lounge that Friday night.
Con: Facebook embarrasses your loved ones.
Of course, my experience is nothing compared to the countless stories of Facebook idiocy reported by the popular Ivy League gossip blog, IvyGate. In July IvyGate that Anthony Villaraigosa Jr., son of the mayor of Los Angeles and member of Princeton's class of 2011, made some embarrassing (and incriminating) admissions over the summer on a Facebook group wall. The underage Ivy-Leaguer-to-be bragged about drinking Bailey's Irish Cream and "several" Coronas with other pre-frosh at a party on a SoCal beach, before being broken up by the "po." The police officer was "pretty chill," Antonio remarked. Imagine, the mayor's son being treated with kid's gloves by the police!
Villaraigosa isn't alone. Wonkette and Gawker have posted Facebook pictures of politicians' college-aged children enjoying embarrassing and sometimes-illicit activities. A picture of former Sen. Bill Frist's son wearing a makeshift beer belt? Check. The daughter of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., making out with another girl? Got it. President Bush's nephew drinking Bud Light while being pawed by a vagrant middle-aged cross-dresser? Believe it or not, the picture's online.
Even fairly innocent information, such as political affiliation, can backfire when posted on Facebook - especially if your dad is running for president. Slate reported that Rudy Giuliani's daughter was a member of a Facebook group supporting Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a story that caught fire and prompted a response from Rudy himself.
Con: Facebook will get you arrested and passed over for jobs.
Of course, the damage caused by the public disclosure of embarrassing or incriminating information on Facebook is exacerbated when your family is famous, but the principle still applies to the plebeian masses. Employers and administrators (and apparently admission officers, according to The Herald) all know about and use Facebook. At other colleges and high schools, Facebook has been used to investigate alcohol policy violations. A Miami University student was even arrested last year for "inducing panic" by changing his Facebook profile picture to a composite sketch of a suspected rapist.
Con: You're ensnared in Facebook's tentacles for life.
"So what?" you might scoff. You're smart with your profile. You take advantage of Facebook's privacy settings. You're judicious with any content you make public. You don't present yourself as a rapist.
Even if you don't post pictures of yourself taking bong rips on the roof of Faunce, there are lots to reasons to retire your Facebook profile. Most revolve around Facebook's less-than-comforting privacy policy. I think that everyone should read Facebook's privacy policy - a lot of people would start thinking about deleting their profiles.
That is, if they can.
Facebook does not allow you to delete your account - only "deactivate." Facebook retains all your information - your pictures, your notes, your wall posts, etc. - in case you decide at a later date to reactivate your account. Facebook does allow you to manually delete each piece of information you've posted, but it's a tedious and inexact process.
Once upon a time, Facebook was a beautiful walled garden. No mini-feed. No applications. It was available only to the Ivy League and a few select schools. There weren't any photo albums, even. (Though I believe "poking" was there from the beginning, and it was just as creepy then as it is now.) Most importantly, your information was kept relatively private. To see how fast Facebook has deteriorated makes me want to delete (er, deactivate) my account and forces me to wonder why I joined the service in the first place.
In fact, I can think of only one remaining pro to Facebook.
Pro: Facebook - at least it's not MySpace.
Nicholas Swisher '08 wants you to post this article on Facebook. And then friend him.
