I’ve been hearing a fair number of questions/comments lately on the downsides of social networking sites, specifically along the line of some uncomfortable situations that can arise when your Facebook or MySpace self interacts with your real world self. What happens when pictures of you posted online carry over into your real life? A teacher had been fired for appearing in pictures available on Facebook. I’m sure there are other documented cases.
But what really got me was some writing by Cory Doctorow (see it here) that I found from slashdot. Among other silly things, he writes, of a new teacher struggling to fit in – “her boss, the school principal, signs up to the service and demands to be added to her friends list. The fact that she doesn’t like her boss doesn’t really matter: in the social world of Friendster and its progeny, it’s perfectly valid to demand to be “friended” in an explicit fashion that most of us left behind in the fourth grade.” He is quick to assume she is the victim, or at least the person with less power in the equation. But I disagree.
The teacher has every right to ignore or reject the friend request. Why, you ask, isn’t that dangerous? Only if you are stupid. 1. No message will be sent to the boss saying his friend request has been denied. The only indication will be if he attempts to send her another request. On facebook, he would not be prompted with a message stating that a request is already pending. 2. If she’s worried about rejecting it outright, she is free to ignore the request and not act on it.
So let’s say she does reject the request – what are the possible repercussions? 1. Nothing. This is the most likely outcome. This isn’t middle school social networking, where a denied friend request, if discovered, means such-and-such person is now a mortal enemy to the friender. 2. The boss tries again, or sends a message. In this case, it can be ignored again, or brought up by the teacher. “Hey – I saw you sent me a message on Facebook. I don’t really do the Facebook thing anymore.” 3. The boss brings it up. In this case, the same response is appropriate. The teacher might also say, “I only use that to keep up with college friends” or “Isn’t that more of a college thing?” 4. The boss uses the rejection as a reason to keep the teacher down. This is trouble, no doubt, but seeing as how a zillion factors could be used for any potential discrimination, if the factor is blatant enough, it can be brought up to the boss’ boss. The fact that something reasonable might get you discriminated against is hardly reason enough to not do it.
In the end, we all have to make a decision. Either keep our profiles clean and be fine with adding anyone as a friend or keep them private, reject friends, and stop worrying about it! If your biggest concern in your career thus far is what to do if your boss sends you a friend request, you are an idiot. You’re an idiot because you can’t figure out what to do for yourself, and your job is so unimportant that you haven’t faced any tougher decisions (and for good reason, as you can’t even figure out the facebook thing).
I speak with a little experience on this thing. When certain eruptions occurred over this here blog at my employer, I realized that I couldn’t keep my friends list full of people from work. As hard as it was, I removed them as friends and that was that. In the end, it was better for me and better for the company. No one wants your personal life mixed up in business. If your boss adds you as a friend, it’s reason enough to hit reject, knowing you can say, “I keep my personal life out of work.”