Kids, Technology, and Facebook

The other day I came across this story about a teacher:

The computer in my high school classroom recently started acting up. After watching me struggle with it, one of my students came up and took over the keyboard. “Your hard drive crashed,” he said.
I called the computer services office and explained, “My computer is down. The hard drive crashed.”
The help desk technician explained “We can’t just send people down on your say-so. How do you know that’s the problem?”
“A student told me,” I answered. “OK…We’ll send someone over right away.”

The point here is that kids “get technology”. Why? One big reason is because kids are not afraid to try new things. They just keep at it until they get it right. They also often have the luxury of time. They are open to learning.

I can’t believe how many adults fear Facebook.com. Recently, though, the population of Facebook users seems to be changing. Facebook started with young people on a college campus. Now many of my high school friends (that I haven’t seen for 20+ years) are joining. Even my mom joined Facebook. (Part of this was due to being somewhat blackmailed into it. If you ever want to see photos of the grandkids again…you need to join FaceBook.)

One question I get frequently is “Why should I join Facebook?”
I’ll answer in the form of a question “Do you value relationships with your friends and family…and your time?” If the answer is “yes”, I believe you should join Facebook. It’s free due to sponsored by advertisements that appear on the right side of the web page.

What is Facebook?
Facebook is also a great way to connect with people that you know and even people that you haven’t seen for a long time. Officially, it is called a “social networking” application. It’s kind of a personal web page and blog where you can interact with other people that also use Facebook. Facebook is a lot more controlled and legitimate than MySpace.com.

I use Facebook to connect with friends and family and to share what’s up. I’ve posted a bunch of photos on FaceBook to share with my Facebook buddies. The new version of iPhoto integrates with Facebook so it’s super easy to upload photos. There is a Facebook iPhone application so I can even update my page live from my phone and check on my friends as well while I’m on the road. Facebook helps you track birthdays, major events, and even find other people that live nearby or have common interests.

Once you begin connecting to many people via Facebook, it can become addictive. My wife and I were competing at one time to see who had more friends. Then she simply gave up. (To her credit I have 10 years more friends that she does…and a custom database I developed to keep track of them all.) Although Facebook can take a lot of your time, in the end I believe it saves you time. Why should you repeat the same story over and over to multiple friends? You can post your photos of your latest travels or family events and all your friends see it at once…and can even comment on it. It helps you to stay more connected with people around you that you value. Then when you do see your friends you can converse at a deeper level since they already are aware of the basics of what’s going on in your life.

When you know something about the personal lives of the people around you, it improves your work environment and fosters a culture where people care more about each other. Facebook will also allow you to create or join groups if you like for associations, clubs, fans, etc. Then you can automatically get notifications of events and things that may be of direct interest to you.

What’s a Friend?
There may be some confusion with Facebook regarding what a “friend” is. There are different levels of relationships you have in life but on Facebook they’re all called a friend. Facebook friends can consist of:

• Close friends and family. Real friends.
• Acquaintances or people you’ve recently run into.
• People you want to maintain some minimal contact with such as people you haven’t seen in 20+ years. Maybe you’re curious to see what people are up to…and it may help to plan a reunion. Maybe you will rekindle a lost friendship.
• Business connections…to get to know co-workers or contacts on a personal level.
• Extended family…to find out who they are and get to know them a bit.

My Facebook Policies
To help me keep my sanity, I set some personal rules or policies for my usage of Facebook. They are:

• I only connect with people that I actually know or have met in person. Occasionally, I will connect to a friend of a friend but I need to be sure that knowing about their lives will add value to my life. If someone posts annoying information, I can quietly and discreetly “defriend” them. Facebook doesn’t even tell them so as not to hurt their feelings.
• I ignore almost all requests to add applications or play games. I don’t have time for that. “Trout slapping” and “poking” are not so much for me. I find a strength in the “Ignore” button. You can, too. Don’t feel obliged to join every cause that your friends are involved in.
• My main Facebook photo is of me. It is not my kid, my dog, my favorite politician, or me with someone that might be confused with me. This makes it easy for people to identify who I am…even if they haven’t seen me for a long time.
• I do not use Facebook purely as a marketing tool for my business. I have a genuine interest in using Facebook to get to know people and be social.
• I do not post things on Facebook that I wouldn’t want anyone in the world to see. Even though there are privacy settings, Facebook is a public forum. Remember that potential employers may visit your Facebook page. Those embarrassing party photos may prevent you from getting a job in the future. Although Facebook has many privacy controls (and they are especially important for younger people), my privacy level is pretty open so that people can find me easily.
• I maintain a clean and simple Facebook page so as not to confuse others or myself.

Here are some other Facebook tips that might help you:

• When you post on someone’s wall everyone sees it. Avoid posting personal details about yourself or others that you do not what shared with all their friends or anyone that looks at their wall.
• If you want to send someone a private e-mail, use a Message. If you want to be more direct, just send them an e-mail directly outside of Facebook. Often you can find your friend’s email address on their profile Info tab. This also helps you stay in contact if they change their e-mail address in the future.
• Do not invite friends to message threads unless you know that they know the other people and are VERY interested in the topic. Currently, there is no way in Facebook to back out and remove yourself from a message thread. You just need to agree with everyone to stop chatting…and sometimes this is not easy…especially if you’ve never met the other people.
• Look through your wall once in a while. If you see any inappropriate messages or photos that were posted by someone else, simply click on the Delete button next to each one.

I hope these ideas and tips help you make use of a great tool and help you overcome any fear of Facebook technology. Take the attitude of a kid and just try it out. The worst thing is that you decide it’s not for you. The best thing is that it improves your life. Hope to see you there.