My mother says the scariest thing about Facebook is that there are no rules. How can I distinguish love interests from professional contacts when everyone is just a ‘friend,’ she worries.
How wrong she is.
Last week, five friends and I discussed Facebook etiquette. Without much effort, we agreed on several key patterns in our online behavior, an unwritten rulebook:
Friendly hellos and plans to meet for coffee merit a wall post, which can be seen by anyone. Date invites or secret gossip go by Facebook message (like a private email, but sent over Facebook’s server). Aimless chatter occurs over AOL Instant Messenger. For job interviews or chats with Mom, there is Skype’s online phone service. Email is for sending resumes and contacting professors.
The hierarchy is strict. Mixing up the categories—asking someone out on their wall, for example, or Skype-ing just to make lunch plans—is social suicide.
My younger sister, a high-school sophomore, has an equally strong online code. Ever since my mother got a Facebook profile, my sister has busily mocked her blundering misuse of the site. ‘You can’t call me by baby names on my wall, ALL my friends will see that!’
But my sister’s Facebook etiquette is not the same as mine. For my sister, regulation is about hiding more formal contact (with family, adults and teachers) from her casual friends, so they don’t see her as un-cool. For my friends and I, regulation is about concealing casual content, relationships and college life from potential employers or professors. Some of my friends, for example, have taken to editing their Facebook pages during internship-application-season in case employers are online.
Every media revolution—from the first papers to radio and telegraph to TV—has seen old rulebooks thrown out. Skeptics, like my mother, inevitably panic, but eventually, new rules develop. Wikipedia has already established its own system of authority, freezing pages when content becomes unreliable or hostile.
With Facebook now open to everyone, the rules will continue to change. The question is how. As they join social networks, will an older generation of CEO’s and parents adopt social manners from the young? Or, as the first group of users grows up, will Facebook itself grow more formal?
