Happy Facebook: How Involved in Our Online Social Networks Are We?

Facebook is a thriving online social network, as vibrant and alive as those who subscribe to it. It is enormously helpful and convenient in terms of keeping in touch with friends, gaining new ones, and contacting old ones. Those who said that technology would isolate each individual clearly need to rethink their ideas after witnessing the web of communication that Facebook has created.

However, with increased information and updates on friends' personal information and activities comes increased stalking ability. Facebook appears to be taking away our freedom to decide just how much we want our friends to be involved in our lives. This is easy problem to fix, because if Facebook's practices become too intrusive, you can always delete your account. But would you really consider doing that?

One manifestation of this problem is in birthdays. Normally you might not have a knack for remembering birthdays, but you might know those of your close friends and family. However, with the arrival of Facebook, you are told when all of your Facebook friends' birthdays are, so you have no excuse for not knowing. This might not be a problem, because Facebook only tells you the birthdays that occur in the next week, but most people that I know with Facebook accounts check them regularly, that is every day or every other day.

What if you do not want to wish your friend a happy birthday? You might ask "why not?" but the point is that Facebook should not create this obligation. Anyone who finds out on Facebook that it is your birthday will most likely send you a message or post on your wall, whether they wanted to or not, because they felt obligated to.

Consider this specific-but-extremely-realistic scenario: you just had a fight with your good friend and you haven't been talking for the past couple of weeks. Her birthday comes up, and you do not want to speak to her or contact her, because maybe she had hurt you in some way. However, this may make matters worse, because not only are you no longer speaking to her, but you did not wish her well on their birthday. Not only that, but it is not that you forgot her birthday; you purposefully ignored the fact. She knew that you knew about her birthday because of Facebook. You knew that she knew you knew. It is bad all around.

Unfortunately, it appears as though Facebook and freedom to conduct certain aspects of you social life as you see fit do not mix. Perhaps we would do best to move away from the comforts and ease of Facebook, because it may begin to dictate our social decisions.