Facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. While it can be a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, it can be a bit intrusive at times. It’s great to be able to keep up with high school friends via Facebook chat, or even through wall posts. There are a lot of people who you wouldn’t necessarily call on the phone to talk and catch up, that you are able to contact through the site.

Family is a different story. There are certain things that you don’t mind sharing with your friends that you wouldn’t want to discuss with your family. It’s a hassle dealing with all the privacy settings, and giving certain users permission to see your entire profile, while restricting what others can view. My solution to this problem was simple. I didn’t accept any friend requests from family members (unless they were siblings or cousins).

Relationships can be even more complicated. If someone is a good friend of yours, they’ll know your relationship status. If they hardly know you, I don’t think it’s any of their business. It can be tricky when you are in a relationship, and one person wants to post your relationship status on Facebook, while the other person doesn’t want to. This could definitely lead to arguments. Also, a lot of people put that they are married to one of their friends as their relationship status, when they are clearly not. This is usually obvious, but can lead to confusion sometimes.

I think Facebook can be a great tool, but you need to use it responsibly. I personally list some basic information about myself on my profile, but I don’t go too much into detail or get too personal. I don’t want random people stalking my profile. I deleted my Facebook profile for a while last year, and didn’t miss it that much. However, I felt out of touch with some people. As long as your profile isn’t public and you are aware of the privacy options, Facebook can be an awesome social networking site.