Megan B. is an active scenester in Toronto. She is young, popular and attractive – always a winning combination. She has over 700 friends, is a sexual experimenter, loves her car and enjoys martinis.

I've never met her, of course, but a few short minutes perusing her very public and very busy Facebook profile reveals a great deal about this local socialite. Few of her “friends” may actually know who she is, and even fewer may be interested, yet her every move is being catalogued for the world to see.

Megan, however, is just one of many students starting the school year deeply entrenched in a virtual social world. Where students were once forced to attend class and initiate conversations with strangers in order to meet people, they can now communicate with their classmates even before classes are in session by listing their courses on their Facebook page.

And it's not just for undergraduates anymore – professors are increasingly joining social networks and befriending students online. Never before has a generation of students been so connected, so easily, to so many people – and so susceptible to distractions and consequences that could affect their academic and post-collegiate careers.

COMPLACENCY

The internet has long been blamed for facilitating a culture of laziness, with students often relying more heavily on Wikipedia entries than solid resources for their research assignments. Facebook has arguably taken this preference for only-a-click-away gratification too far, by replacing actual human interaction with a narcissistic system that inspires contrived self-presentation and an impulse to collect friends with the kind of compulsive, feverishly competitive spirit once reserved for trading sports cards. And since students are plugged into a network of classmates and even professors, skipping class becomes that much more attractive, with the assumption that someone in your friend list will catch you up. One U of T Facebook group has links to lecture recordings for a second-year pharmacology course.

There are also countless groups that promote charities and causes, but in the world of Facebook, they function primarily as a way for individuals to dress up their profile with virtual bumperstickers that reflect their affiliations – unfortunately, they seem to do little to motivate people to become truly involved. If a student wants to communicate to others that they are against the war, they click a button to join the appropriate group.

And while this is a well-intentioned gesture, it is rarely matched with anything remotely close to the degree of political mobilization we saw on campuses 40 years ago. For some people, joining a Facebook group may be the first step toward seriously supporting a given cause, but for many, it's just any easy way to align themselves with certain issues without having to make the effort to effect real change.

PROCRASTINATION

There is such a thing as a healthy amount of distraction, but Facebook does not merely enable procrastination – it encourages it. Unlike such web phenomena as YouTube, MySpace, Livejournal and Flickr, Facebook has insidiously wormed itself into every aspect of our daily lives, not just the time we spend hooked into the computer. Students go out with digital or cellphone cameras in tow, documenting their evenings with the express intention of later posting photos on their Facebook profile. Meanwhile, the news feed function pulls you back into the web every time someone in your network posts a new picture, relationship status or thought of the day.

But all this Facebook facetime can come with a price: this past spring, a Goldman Sach's trader in the UK made headlines when he received a warning that he spent too much time trawling Facebook while at work. He unwisely posted the warning on his profile, and soon after, he was fired. And that leads us to arguably the most important issue here....

PRIVACY

The most significant difference between this generation of students and those previous is their indifference towards privacy. Facebook users are often more than willing to give up a lot of privacy to gain a little attention, with little concern about who might be watching.

When Facebook introduced their news feed function last year, many old-school users posted their outrage at its stalker-friendly catalogue of members' movements. But the grumbling quickly abated as users soon embraced the idea of chronicling their community's actions.

This free access to personal information has already produced some disturbing scenarios. Earlier this year, a columnist at the Penn State Daily Collegian was fired due to comments about a campus dance party he wrote in a Facebook post. In an extreme and now infamous case from the fall of 2005, a student was expelled from Fisher College for comments about a campus-police officer he posted within the network. While these cases are rare, students who post controversial content have to be prepared for consequences.

Meanwhile, a 2006 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that one in every 10 employers screen applicants on social networking sites. There are numerous Facebook groups for people who claim, humorously or otherwise, that they have been or fully expect to be fired because of Facebook. (One woman contacted through one of these groups says she was let go from her job due to the content of her Facebook pictures, and is currently having her claim investigated by the Ontario Labour Relations Board.) Students who are diligently working to complete degrees with the intention of pursuing a coveted career may be surprised by the damage done by a single, seemingly harmless detail visible on their profile. (Might want to rethink those bong shots, for example.)

Posting pictures has always been be the most popular action on Facebook, and at some point in the last decade – blame Paris Hilton – the documentation of embarrassing drunken behaviour and sexual escapades became a source of pride instead of shame. Everyone is eager to post as many pictures as possible. Toronto Facebook user Jonathon B. has been tagged in 996 pictures, while Leah C. has been tagged in 639 pictures. Only a decade ago, it would have been inconceivable that so many personal images would be available for public viewing.

For most students the real worry is not whether someone is watching, but whether no one is – while the future costs of all this overexposure remain just out of view.

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