Thing #7- Facebook Addiction

There is a good reason I not to log into my Facebook account- it totally sucks me in and I get distracted. In fact, I do not check or update it often enough for the this very reason. However, I did benefit from taking a better look at my privacy settings which I have neglected for the past few FB updates. They are still rather confusing but at least this part of he 23 Things gave me a way to refresh my page. How do you unfriend? I think I may have missed that somewhere.
As a librarian, I have had a ton of Facebook questions so it does behoove us to have some familiarity and comfort with it. I haven't really used it to to answer non-Facebook reference questions but who knows. It could be useful for following up on some of the players in current events. Or if you are doing some research on a contemporary famous person. For example, I am friends with the President and while campaigning he would have updates and info on his FB page. (I haven't checked in with him in a while, maybe I should...)

It has been really interesting how Facebook has evolved. I remember the buzz it caused on my college campus (Emory University) when we were finally added to it. Suddenly everyone was on it and totally addicted. By the time I had graduated, I still hadn't joined and now I wish I had since I know I would have had better connections with the people from my past. Back then, (you know waaay back in the early 2002's?) no one really thought much about privacy and security since there was already facebook's inherent edict that only college students were on it. No parents, no professors, no family-or only the young college age ones. It felt a little safer. Now that it is open to the world, privacy is a MAJOR issue. One must watch what gets posted and what you post about other people and how their privacy settings affect you.
Real life examples 1) By the time I got to grad school, all of my profs were on FB. I HAD to be on it too and then had to navigate the should-I-friend-a-professor? waters. (I only friended them after I was out of thier class.) 2) I worked at a middle school where all of the kids and most of the staff were on facebook. Friending the staff opened up my network of friends to include the kids. Not cool! Even though my security settings were ok, I had to get on the staff about friending students and not changing thier security settings so that they couldn't find me since all these little faces kept popping up in my "Suggested Friends"- I am not your friend, I am your librarian and you do not need to know about my life! It was a hassle and I finally stopped friending the staff.