Searching out childhood friends, high school classmates, and even an old crush has never been easier. Social media sites, like Facebook, have become the modern high school reunion.
Now, instead of only getting the chance to see an old pal every five or ten years to catch up on life, technology has made it a possibility in every second of every day.
In the social networking world, your chance of befriending your favorite celebrity or finding a long lost friend has increased drastically. Facebook, which many SMU students use reports that have more than 350 million active users (who have returned to the site in the last 30 days) and that 70 percent of those users are outside of the United States.
Glance over at a computer screen in one of your classes on any given day and it is very likely that at least one student can be seen on a social networking site. With readily accessible search engines and social sites at your fingertips, it’s no wonder that many people are taking advantage of these tools.
Sarah Bennett, an SMU junior, says that she tries to limit her time on Facebook in order to avoid being a ‘creeper,’ the name that she assigns to many people whom she knows who use Facebook to stay extremely involved in the lives of their ‘friends.’
“Every once in a while I’ll check recent pictures of old friends I haven’t talked to in a while to see what they’ve been up to,” she said.
For many students, Facebook and other social networking sites are a part of their daily lives, and their personal pages are a way to express their personalities and thoughts. In a way, they create their own personal label.
Darin Ford, director of the Hegi Family Career Development Center at SMU, said “The number one mistake students make on their personal social media site falls in the category of posting unflattering statements and/or photos on these Web sites while allowing a large number of people access to private information.”
The online audience per page ratio is large. Facebook statistics show that the average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on their site with an average of 130 friends—quite an audience.
Sean Casa, an SMU junior advertising major, laughed off the question of ever stalking someone on the Internet. He made the remark that Facebook stalking allows this generation of ‘creepers’ to ‘poke’ the object of their obsession without receiving a restraining order.
A recent story in the New York Times showed that students are not the only Facebook users experiencing the advent of social stalking. Even athletes are noticing an evolution in the way that their fans relate to them.
Many SMU students add their favorite celebrities on Facebook, though this may have made things awkward last year for anyone who added Nastia Liukin after she won her Olympic gold.
Mason Galloway, an SMU sophomore, occasionally adds his preferred celebrities as friends, most recently an attractive female comic he saw at Hyena’s comedy club in Mockingbird Station.
“It’s a good way to keep up with her schedule and see when she’s coming into town next,” he said. “Plus I really liked her and wanted to see what her interests and beliefs are.”
Well, you may be surprised to hear that this evolved phenomenon of online stalking has also crept into the corporate world, and the audience of your online personal site may also include a potential employer, or not, depending on what they find on your site.
The Web site job-hunt.org gives a list of the top 50 companies who are no longer just looking at applications to determine whether you should be floating around in their applicant pool, but companies like IBM, PepsiCo and even the U.S Department of State are searching you out and even recruiting on Twitter.
“I believe some ethical employers and recruiters are carefully reviewing this public information for data that would positively add to an applicant’s status or finding data that would quickly devalue that status when comparing to others in the applicant pool,” Ford said.
Take tweeting for example, the new term for the action of up-dating one’s personal status on the social networking site Twitter.
Next time you become passionate about something or think this spring break’s photo on a beach is ‘great,’ remember to consider if IBM or PepsiCo would think this post is as ‘great’ as you do.
Just because we can ‘friend’ celebrities, it doesn’t mean we can afford to live out their rock star lives along with them online. Keep in mind that it is just as easy for you to search for someone as it is to become a victim of online stalking.
