Social media has become such an integral part of the online experience that it sometimes seems odd when those of us who were early adopters encounter people who find it frightening or scoff at its relevance. One concern often cited by these folks is privacy. “Why would I want to share all of my information with the world?” or “I don’t want everyone to know all of my details. That can’t be safe!”
Well, it probably isn’t a good idea to share everything. We may find down the road that Millennials have gotten “burned” (so to speak) by the amount of information they are comfortable with putting out there. On the other hand, they may be redefining our world by letting it all be out there. Regardless, social media is a part of everyday life for so many people and as such, it is important to know more about how they work.
We’ll be posting a series of articles on the privacy settings for various social media websites. Today, I’ll begin with Facebook.
Facebook does not really make it easy to keep things private by default and, in my opinion, doesn’t do a great job of explaining what each option does. I say that even though I really like it. I love being able to keep up with friends, family and colleagues. I love sharing things I come across online and what I am doing right now. The downside is, sometimes I am surprised by who is paying attention to what I am doing.
Last week Dave Mullen had a post on his blog titled “Teens and 20-Somethings May Leave Facebook” in which he predicts that younger folk will leave because they are annoyed that the platform is now being populated by people they don’t really “want” to share with. (Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it.)
I was chatting with a high school senior a couple weeks ago and Facebook came up. He commented offhand that he may have to find a new place online to keep up with his friends and I asked, “why?” That’s when he tipped me off.
“It was kind of weird when my parents joined and friended me. Seriously, though, my grandma friended me the other day! This isn’t cool. A lot of my friends are talking about looking for something else.”
That got me thinking. Do college students want their parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents walking into their dorm rooms on a Saturday night to jot down something cheesy on the white board over their desk for all their friends to see? If it’s not cool in the offline world, what would make it cool online?
When I read that I thought to myself, that if they understood how to adjust their privacy settings, maybe they wouldn’t feel as threatened by other generations joining the network.
The point is that we all have different groups with which we share different things. While Facebook’s settings leave a bit to be desired in the usability department, they can be used to your advantage. Here I’ll try to detail some of the settings you modify to protect your privacy on Facebook.
First of all, the key to privacy in Facebook is Friend Lists. You have by default a group called All Friends, but suppose you wanted create a list for people you don’t know that well (for example, I have a list called “Acquaintances”). In the case of the teen Dave Mullen talked to above, maybe a list for “Family” would help. Once you have established those lists, head over to the privacy settings and customize the access these lists have to your information.
To create a list, go to “Friends” on the top menu in Facebook. Then click “Make a New List” in the left hand menu.
To access the privacy settings in Facebook, from your FB Home page, go to: Settings > Privacy Settings. Here you will see the different areas of your Facebook account and can adjust privacy settings:
Under Profile you’ll see that you can customize access to the different areas of your Facebook Profile.
Each section except for Profile lets you specify lists of friends you may want to exclude from that information. Perhaps you don’t want Acquaintences to see your Personal Info, Status Updates, Photos and Videos Tagged of You, but you were ok with them seeing your Basic, Education, and Work Info.
Status Updates Privacy
Customizing Status Updates Privacy
In the sections you want to protect you click the pull down menu and select Customize. The window that pops up lets you add lists you want to exclude.
You can then check whether or not this is displaying correctly by using the “See how a friend sees your profile” tool at the top of the Profile Privacy page.
When you type in one of your Facebook friend’s names you can see exactly what they have access to in your profile. [I will note that I have see it not be 100% accurate when/if you click on other tabs within the preview pane.]
Creating lists is easy and effective. It allows you to be free to accept friend requests from just about anyone, but not have to worry that you are sharing more than you intend to with those you don’t feel compelled to get to know better. And honestly, boundaries are a good thing.
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Excellent blog post, Sarah! Can I post it on my Facebook page?
Facebook turned 5 today.
Happy birthday, Facebook!
LOL – Of course!
One of my friends didn’t want to be tagged on his photos (which were uploaded by someone else) because he didn’t look professional there. His co-workers might see it and think otherwise about his personality. He is really conscious about his Facebook updates because he wants to keep his profile professional.
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Very handy. Lots of us don’t know the inside out details of social networking tools and it’s kinda rude not to accept some friend invitations especially those from relatives even though we may not want them to see everything. Gr8!!