Be sure they're real friends!

Tell your kids not to feel bad if they fall for fake friend requests in a social-networking site. After all, some of the smartest computer-security professionals have fallen for them. What's important is that they know to be alert. Accepting new friends indiscriminately is really becoming bad news, SecurityManagement.com reports. The article says two top network security executives conducted an experiment, creating "fake profiles of prominent computer security professionals" on several social-network sites, and then sending out "plenty of friend requests to other security experts. They were so astounded by the results they presented to the Black Hat hacking conference" in Las Vegas this week. "Each time they lured in more than 50 new friends within 24 hours. Some of those people were chief security officers for major corporations and defense industry workers."

'Friending' against school policy

It's against school policy in Mississippi's Lamar County Public School District for teachers and students to text each other or to be "friends" in social-networking sites. "Both texting and social networking have too many gray areas that could lead to misunderstanding and downright trouble," the Hattiesburg American reports. The policy's being considered in other Mississippi school districts as well. This reminds me of a case of teacher-to-student sexual exploitation involving texting in the news this past year (sorry I can't find the link at the moment). I'd like to hear your thoughts on the validity of this school policy - in comments here or, ideally, in the ConnectSafely.org forum.

Online 'friending': Nothing that new

A commentator who used to be a "pre-Facebook teen" makes an excellent point about today's social networking: Things haven't changed much since pre-social-Web days. "Categorizing and ranking friends existed long before these social-networking sites came around," writes L.A.-based writer and editor Sara Libby in the Christian Science Monitor. "Adults baffled by the proliferation of MySpace and Facebook are confusing themselves by viewing the use of these sites as a completely new and foreign phenomenon. Kids who network with friends online aren't affecting their ability to create real, face-to-face friendships any more than typing a term paper affects their ability to address a postcard by hand. Kids are still kids. Online networking is just an updated version of collecting choice yearbook signatures or, in my case, wearing a friend's picture on a T-shirt," Sara says, referring to the "buddy shirts" of her high school years. "It became a status symbol to invite the most popular people from the team to take a buddy pic with you, then to wear that shirt around school. The cooler the people in your picture, the more impressive the shirt was." Now it's online "friending" that allows public display of teens' social status.

More than 150 friends?!

The Wall Street Journal's "numbers guy," Carl Bialik, zoomed in on that number - 150 - which many reporters have cited as the limit to the number of personal contacts any human being could possibly sustain. This is when they're writing stories about the lengthy friends lists some teens have amassed in social sites. The 150 comes from the research of Robin Dunbar at Oxford University, "extrapolating from social groups in nonhuman primates and then crediting people with greater capacity because of our larger neocortex, the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language." Ah, got it. So we definitely can sustain more friendships than primates. But, actually, Dunbar himself, Bialik reports, believes that social sites "could 'in principle' allow users to push past the limit." To the professor, the real question is "whether those who keep ties to hundreds of people do so to the detriment of their closest relationships - defined by Prof. Dunbar as those formed with people you turn to when in severe distress." Bialik cites another recent UK survey that found - no huge surprise - friendships really start offline, but "less-close friendships and acquaintanceships, however, also die offline, while the Web can help sustain them" [read the article for examples]. I suspect this is one of the things youth who move far away, go off to college, or graduate and leave behind college friends so appreciate about social networking. There's much more that's thought-provoking in the Journal column - do check it out.

Adding strangers as 'friends'

A new study found that Facebook users may need to take their personal privacy more seriously - also that there seems to be some confusion about who is and isn't a friend there. It doesn't appear to have been that scientific a study, but the methodology is interesting: IT security firm Sophos "created a fake Facebook profile, under the name 'Freddi Staur' ('ID Fraudster' with the letters rearranged), and randomly requested 200 members to be friends with 'Freddi'," CNET reports. "Out of those 200, 87 accepted the friend request and 82 of those gave 'Freddi' access to 'personal information' such as e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, and school or work data. Presumably, the other five had restricted 'Freddi' to limited profile access, which many users select for bosses, parents, or people they don't know in real life." Sophos says that, although it's unlikely this behavior will result in theft, this is the kind of fuel phishers seek for their social engineering (manipulation). BTW, I admit to a bit of that friending confusion - I have a Facebook profile and get friend requests all the time from people I don't know personally, and I confess to feeling kind of mean and unfriendly if I ignore them. If an online-safety advocate feels that way….

Professional & personal lives online

It's all getting kind of muddy online for grownups. For the pioneers of social networking - teenagers and 20-something just starting out their careers - it wasn't such a big deal. They didn't make the distinctions we make between "lives." They, especially teens, experimented with different persona, but that's just it. The persona were experimental, not established. Now that we adults are getting into social networking, and social sites are proliferating and specializing (or settling into niches), fortunately we have some choices: We can have our professional social networking, our extended-family social networking, our music social-networking, but we are also having social networking dilemmas. Take Washington Post tech reporter Rob Pegoraro's experience with Facebook, for example. For him, Facebook started out to be "purely recreational" and kind of solidified in his head as such. Then co-workers started friending him. Okaaaaay, he could maybe get used to that. But then p.r. people in his business circles but not personally known to him wanted to be "friends." Hmmm. The problem is, Facebook has become what you might call the hip LinkedIn.com (a "social-networking" site that has always been about professional networking), so plenty of people 30+ are now doing professional networking on it. Facebook does have "at least 135" privacy options. "Yet not one of these options allows you to categorize Facebook contacts as close or distant friends." It' getting a little tricky. See p. 2 of Rob's article for his conclusion.