I’m not familiar with the “Facebook,” but apparently it’s an online directory where students in high school and/or college can post their picture and a brief profile of themselves. Naturally, kids being kids, they sometimes don’t think too clearly before publishing stuff.
Including one college junior who posted her fondness for the “festive greens” (a term for marijuana of which I was not familiar). She thought it was pretty cool and funny — right up until her grandmother found out about it.
So if anyone’s looking to hire a pothead next summer, please keep Ms. Aronoff in mind… presuming she graduates.
Doesn’t anyone understand the term “discretion” any more?
Heh, Facebook is fun. I can’t fathom a potential employer scouting out my Facebook, though. They’d be bored to death if they did.
There was a murder recently in Austin, Texas, and the folks responsible had ridiculously bad facebook profiles. Al Capone quotes. Favorite movies were all really ultra-violent and sadistic. “Controlled substances make me happy.” Stuff like that. ‘Twas crazy. I knew they were guilty the moment I saw their facebook profiles.
I love the “You can’t be responsible for what you’re saying at all times in your life” quote. Um, isn’t that what being an adult is all about?
Last year I helped code a content analysis study on college students’ blogs. It was disturbing how much personal, and personally damaging, information some of these students reveal. There was one blog of an eighteen year old girl that included her first and last name, birthday, and a photo (it was fairly common for people to display all that information, frighteningly), and the blog itself was a day-by-day recounting of her “partying”, including various drugs, alcohol, and sex. I wonder how many parents ever bother to google their kids names.
Will this be a generational thing, and the internet savvy kids of today will be much more aware of what their kids are doing on the internet? Will their kids know better?
Being a college student myself, I’ve had facebook for a little while, and yeah, people just post stuff that makes you go “GUH?”
But it’s not as bad as MySpace, which serves the same purpose as Facebook, but for students in high school and younger. So you know, those on The Facebook are 18+, but MySpace is just… asking for it. I never EVER touched MS.
actually, Myspace is for college kids as well.
I should know, I have my own.
At least myspace tries to regulate things a little.
For example, they do not allow explicit pictures to be displayed as profile pictures.
I know a woman, a college student, who was a model for nude photography. She used an assumed name, so she figured she was safe. But then her mom found some of the pics. (I’m guessing some male friend saw and recognized her and passed a URL to her mom.)
And my son’s favorite story of internet parenting was of the boy who got in trouble for posting to a forum at 3:45 am. He was supposed to be asleep and his mom read the post.