The amazing Facebook

Of all the technological advances we've seen in recent years on the Internet, perhaps the most amazing ones are the social networking sites; places like Twitter, My Space, and especially Facebook. I have a page on all three but Facebook is the only one I use daily.

For those of you who aren't familiar with social networking sites; the concept is really fairly simple but the implementation is sort of mind-boggling, especially for those of us who grew up before the technology revolution took place. You simply find the site on the net, join, fill out your own personal profile, upload a picture of you if you desire, and then search the net for friends that you would like to keep up with. Other people will also look for you. On Facebook, anything the people write to you or other friends on Facebook is immediately published on your home page.

This is where the amazing part comes in. You literally become a part of another person's life, depending on how much they're willing to share and believe me, some people share a lot. They literally lead their lives on Facebook. They tell you when they get up, what they're having for breakfast, when they're leaving for work or school, how their day is going, who they're seeing socially or romantically and how those relationships are working out. Whenever anyone posts anything, you or any of their friends can post a response to what they write and that response is also viewed by everyone they're friends with.

So if a girl is having romantic problems with a guy and decides to write about it, all of her friends immediately know and many respond. Girls tend to stick up for the girls and guys for the guys so some really interesting interactions occur; sometimes to the point of hurting friendships if the tone becomes too harsh.

I joined Facebook to keep up with family, friends, and former students and the site certainly allows me to do that in a way that was impossible before. I've been blessed to have always had really good relationships with my students and after they put in their two years at MCC and move on, we always promise to e-mail each other or call or write and often we do for a little while and then we stop. When we stop, we often lose touch with each other because young people move around a lot early in their lives before they finally settle in with a job and a family. With Facebook, it matters not where you go or how many times you move because you take Facebook with you. I'm closing in on 300 friends on Facebook and a significant majority of them are students and former students.

I talk to Jake Dunworth about the St. Louis Cardinals, Nicholas Hobbs about flying, Dallas Helms about police work, Owen McPhillips about politics, Dolyn Brown III about golf, and Gerald Golden about music, Liz Garcia about college life and our gone-but-never-forgotten best friend, Kurt Ruble.

I also talk to my two boys in Arkansas daily on Facebook as well as friends I have spread around the country. It's a wonderful tool for doing that.

I suppose the most controversial thing about Facebook is whether or not we SHOULD be so open about what's going on in our lives because this represents a seminal change from the way the older generation was raised. My generation was raised to keep our private lives private because it wasn't anyone else's business. For some reason, that concept never took hold with me because I've always been pretty much of an open book, even before I started writing this column. I don't mind sharing my joys and my pains, my ups and my downs, my successes and my failures with others because I've always believed that we're all in this together and that we can learn from others. So whenever I experience a significant event in my life, I write about it because I know that others are going through similar things in their lives and maybe my experience and how I responded to it can help others.

But I think the majority of people from my generation aren't like that. They weren't raised to be that way and they consequently didn't become that way. They, for the most part, protect their privacy zealously because they really DON'T believe that what happens to them or their family is anyone else's business. That's why Facebook is dominated by the younger generation and the older generation is mostly absent. Those people around my age who DO join Facebook say very little about what's going on in their private lives and often times don't even post a photo. They tend to join to keep up with family only and share very little if any personal information on the site.

So we're undergoing a sea change in deciding to share personal, intimate details of our lives with everyone we've either claimed or accepted as a friend on Facebook and I believe, without being overly dramatic, that this creates a significant cultural shift in the way we conduct our business and our lives as human beings on this planet.

Whether it ends up being a good thing or a bad thing for us, both individually and collectively, remains to be seen.