But, hey–this is the West, ain’t it? “It’s your misfortune and none of my own!” If you’re happy, I’m happy, and let’s have a beer and a bump to seal the deal, OK?

But I have an account. I have it so my students can find me online under my real name, and hope it means they won’t look much deeper. And I use it to keep in touch with a bunch of RL friends and family (and some blogfriends who are RL friends even though we haven’t actually met in person yet — if that makes sense). But I also minimize all the stuff in my profile, make most things viewable only to friends, and am very careful about what I post (I said I was depressed once, and a couple of students showed up to make sure I was OK!). I also never add students to my Facebook list unless it’s at their request, and only write on their walls in response to their posts on mine. And I haven’t run into the issue of students wanting me to play any of the game apps.

OTOH, I have had students IM me in Facebook, send me occasional private messages, and send me links to things. I tell them how much of their lives I can see, and ask them to think carefully before posting — and have nailed a couple on using Facebook in class. I think maybe I feel differently about it than you do because I see it as being clearly connected to the ADM in her SLAC role. Students see that I have a life, and friends who aren’t at SLAC, and a few relatives, but I can limit my exposure. The hard part was getting a couple of relatives to understand that I really don’t want them sharing details about my personal life or using my friends list to sell Amway!

We have lots of fun on FB and from my POV that’s cool, as long as it doesn’t become the centre of anybody’s life. It took some of us (including me) awhile to realize the disastrous potential of the e-mail which gets fired off so quickly, can go to exactly the wrong person and can be forwarded to people who hate you. I think I’ve got the hang of it now. But I do agree that the potential for these technologies to be destructive to those who mess up is just huge.

One thing that bothers me is the potential for information sharing by the network “owners”. Thus far, such intrusions have been fended off. I don’t expect that to last.

Absolutely. Those of us (and yes, I am 25+ but only by a little bit) for whom Facebook was something that started out as a networking site among a few dozen colleges and universities are now handling a different beast. I’m less taken back by the reappearance of old high school friends whose new last names send you back to that old yearbook and more by old high school teachers, choir directors, church leaders, mentors, and others whose lives are now visible to me in extraordinary detail. It’s a bit unnerving to see someone you called “Miss So-and-so” less than ten years ago now become a peer of sorts who has detailed posts about her personal life.

No technology is inherently good or inherently evil. I know Facebook is just software. I just have seen a lot of stories that revolve around the plot line that someone has not recognized or respected reasonable boundaries in social networking sites. Granted, these are stories that revolve around the sensational and the tragic (“Prof says stupid things!” “Neighborhood parent hounds teen to suicide!”) but it is a powerful medium to put in the hands of young people who can’t conceptualize next week, let along the potentially decades-long consequences of posting something embarassing on Facebook at age 15. For myself, I just don’t see what they offer that I can’t get through other media. And if that means I miss out on people’s photos of their vacations, children, and pets–well, that’s my cross to bear.

It sounds like since all of you are doing Facebook, it’s on the way to no longer being the hip thing that all of the kids are doing because no grownups understand it. (By this I mean no offense–it’s just my guess that all commenters here are 25+.) So maybe it’s on its way to being corporatized, professionalized, and monetized already, in the manner of all youth fads in recent history, many of which no longer fall into the “fad” category.

Still, she is intrigued by the forms of friendship and social communication she sees happening there. Your dorm-room analogy just doesn’t fit, at least among the grown-ups Moose mostly hangs w/ on FB. It’s more like the kind of intimacy that might get established over drinks at a professional conference — except that it’s a little less frenetic, the drinks are cheaper, and, yes, you can do it in your jammies.

Not trying to convince you or anything. Just sayin’ it’s intriguing, and we feel like we’re learning something worthwhile about 21st-century sociality.

I get to hear not only about what it is like to be a new English prof from across the country, but I’ve heard about how tough it is to set up your own lab and to have a joint soc/ws appointment — and none of those people are close enough friends that we’d be visiting or emailing each other without facebook.

That said, I would never have drunken pictures of myself, but I could see myself getting in trouble for complaining about the mountains of grading, or talking about how I am always procrastinating. But really, isn’t that just being human?