i joined Facebook many years ago before it was open to anyone outside of higher education. some of my students had requested i join and i did . . . and for the first few years on Facebook i checked in maybe once a year, if that. once Facebook opened up to the masses, i suddenly started seeing old high school and college buddies appearing (to the tune of hundreds). for that matter, even my mother joined Facebook. and that’s when i started checking into Facebook more often. One of the things I really liked about Facebook was the fact that i could be the public Sean (e.g., the educator Sean) on my wall and i could control how i was seen by various groups of friends. i tried to keep my wall fairly humorous with somewhat clever status updates or even mundane (e.g., a cooking update), but i stayed away from posting anything that could be perceived as being controversial. this is the public me that a student might see around campus or at the library or the grocery store. all educators have their public side. but all educators have their private lives as well. heck, we even have public lives that are largely private when we travel to see old friends in other states, etc.
last month, Facebook changed their privacy settings to force everyone to be more open. so now, if i respond to a friend’s status update with something goofy that the private Sean would say, but the public Sean wouldn’t say then instantly a notification will appear on my wall as “recent activity.” i can no longer keep this hidden automatically. to be fair, Facebook allows me to delete this from my wall once it appears, but i don’t know whether this information is still appearing in my students live feeds, etc. — and the fact of the matter is that even in the seconds before i delete my recent activity then someone could see my comments and i shouldn’t have to run back to my wall after everything i post around Facebook. prior to these privacy changes, i could respond to a friend’s photo or status update with an inside joke and i had privacy settings to ensure that none of my students would see those comments . . . unless they were also friends with my former college buddies, for example. this was highly unlikely given that all of my old buddies live in other states. so, while nothing was entirely private even before, i was comfortable with the level of perceived privacy that i could be the highly sarcastic Sean and not have to walk on egg shells with my comments. i should note, nothing i write would get me fired or in trouble; rather, my little interactions with old buddies would probably just help people realize more quickly that i am a big goof. i’d rather not make it easy for people to figure that out. ;~)
i get that the founder of Facebook has this vision of everyone being open with their lives. good for him. clearly, the guy has never been a teacher . . . and i doubt he’s ever even lived in the real world.