Recent Changes to Social Media Outlets
If you’re a Facebook junkie like me, you must have noticed that the social network giant launched some changes this week. In the name of enhanced “security,” the messages, updates and pictures that you post on your personal page can now be aimed at select audiences. In the past, you had a choice of sharing information with “Everyone,” that is, all zillion or so users of Facebook; with your “Friends;” or with “Friends of Friends.”
Now you can select precisely which individual “Friends” will see your vacation snapshots or party pics or philosophical musings and which “Friends” will not. Sounds good, right? Sounds like a win for privacy and user control, right?
I’m not so sure.
Did any of the IT gurus at Facebook think about Mean Girls when they were designing these changes? Am I the only one whose first thought when I saw the new option: “Hide this post from these people (fill in the blank)” was, “Oh, they’ve just invented a hundred more ways for tweens and teens to be cruel.”
No longer are all “friends” equal. I tell my six and eight year old daughters that it’s rude to whisper in a friend’s ear in front of other people. Facebook has now made whispering and exclusion a larger part of its design. I would wager, sadly, that these new ways to exclude will become part of the site’s appeal for kids who are experimenting with power in their social relationships.
With the news out this week that teenagers who use social media are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, the recent “security” changes seem poorly timed. Parents could previously require their child to add them as a “Friend” in order to keep an eye on their son or daughter’s profile. Now kids can easily, with Facebook’s help, exclude Mom or Dad from anything significant or incriminating on their pages.
Adolescence is difficult enough. Social media has just made the journey even more perilous.
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Category: New Posts, Social Media, tweens
