Social Networking Sites: Why Private Profiles Should Cease to Exist

Picture this: You're browsing Myspace, Facebook, or other social networking site of choice. You're looking for new and interesting people to meet, or even people you already know. You stumble across a profile and encounter an unexpected burden: the person has a private profile.

Here's another loop: The user only accepts friend requests from people he or she knows.

If you've ever been in this situation, you may be frustrated. You may be annoyed that people come on sites designed to meet people, and then still feel the need to hide in their little corner of the world. You may have been trying to figure out if a profile belongs to the same best friend you had in high school, but thanks to their private profile, you can't figure it out.

Myspace at least has it half right with private profiles. They automatically make them private if the user is under the age of 16. This is fine to protect young kids from online predators. The problem came though, when adults started pretending they were younger to have private profiles. Then, Myspace decided to let everyone have the option to be private. Pretty soon, about half of the profiles were not open to the public.

Facebook allows you to restrict certain parts of your profile from everyone. You can make some information available to friends only, or keep your profile open only to those in your social network. This doesn't seem so bad until people on your own network are hiding out when you look them up.

I don't think these sites should've given all users the option to keep their profile private. Why? Read on for more:

When you signed up, you understood that these sites were created to help you meet new people. It is fine to keep in touch with your friends in yet another way, but that's not the main purpose. If it was only created to keep in touch with your social circle, that's the way it would be. However, you're on a site based on finding cool new people; not one based on hiding and placing tons of privacy restrictions.

If you hide behind a private profile, you must be paranoid about something. Having restrictive settings is not acceptable because you don't want certain people looking at your profile. You also shouldn't use them if you're afraid people will talk about you and the things you put on your space. If you really care what impressions people make of you based on your profile, don't put it on there! When you put something up that raises eyebrows, you will cause a lot of conversation. You don't like that; stop putting it on the Internet. Keep a diary (the pen and paper one with a lock).

Don't make a Myspace or Facebook private; then go public in other ways across the Internet. I saw a display of this that truthfully disgusted me. A local girl was in a serious car accident and a family member decided to raise money for her medical bills by auctioning off items such as celebrity autographs. I thought the idea around the Freewebs site was great. They also made another homepage dedicated to this girl and her story; which was merely for friends to look at and sign. No problems there either.

Then a friend made a Myspace group dedicated to her. Her mother built a Myspace page in her honor as well. The group was private membership and the profile was private as well. I thought it was pretty sad that the family did this. Then again, who wouldn't publicize that they were looking for money? What a shame for the girl who was in a coma for over a year. I feel like her family had no right to go public with the whole Internet world, but depend on a social networking site to hide them. Then they were denying anyone who sent a friend request but didn't know the girl. If you're going to be that way, don't bother. People who don't know the girl can care about her too.

The lesson in this is: Don't come on a social networking site unless you don't care what people think of you and you are genuinely interested in meeting others. If you'd rather only talk to people you know, get an e-mail account, a cell phone number, or an AOL Instant Messenger account. Don't take up bandwidth from people who actually want to make full use of social networking.