Curating my Facebook profile

Facebook has been a household name for a few years, and by now, most people have their own profile. However, lately I’ve noticed that a growing number of users are choosing to deactivate or severely limit the content of their accounts. This got me thinking about my own Facebook presence…

I remember when I first learned about the social media site, during my undergrad in 2005. A friend attending the London School of Economics had sent me an email telling me that I just haaad to create a profile, because it was the coolest new thing. At that time, Facebook was only available to individuals attending universities and colleges, with a valid email address from that institution. It had only been large American schools and some overseas who could create a Facebook profile. When my small undergraduate university (Acadia) was added to the list of eligible universities, I thought “Why not?”, and in 2005, Facebook changed everything. At that time, there was no such thing as regional networks, e.g. Toronto, Ont., (I believe that occurred in 2007), and everyone in my network (Acadia) had the open permission to view strangers, add them as a friend, and know all about you without you knowing. Privacy settings were the last thing on anyone’s mind, maybe because there were no albums, tagged photos, or much to be private about (besides your contact information). The closest of strangers would request your friendship, merely because you attended the same lectures, or knew each other through a vague mutual contacts. Things escalated with the introduction of photo albums and tagging. People would create an album practically each weekend, highlighting the amounts of alcohol they had consumed, who their friends were, or how silly they looked on Halloween. For me, it was an age of no consequences, friend-count popularity, and online attention-seeking.

Fast forward to the present: 2011.

What’s changed? I finished a Masters degree, and am no longer in school. I’m a young professional with a great job. I still love my friends, my family, and my weekends, but… I haven’t removed anything from Facebook in six years: I have close to 30 photo albums, thousands of tagged photos of me, and have accumulated hundreds and hundreds of friends, all of whom have access to my past, bad or good. This got me thinking about what I want to put out there as a depiction of myself for others. I decided I had to curate my Facebook profile.

I’ve been using privacy settings for years, where non-friends can only see my profile picture, first and last name, and which networks I belong to. I’m aware of the different privacy settings for groups of contacts, but I don’t have time to go through each to establish if they’re my “acquaintance”, “friend”, “co-worker”, or which should only access my “limited profile”. Recently I sat down and went through all of my Facebook contacts to “unfriend” (not my words) close to 200 “friends”. It felt amazing. These were people like the aforementioned who’d added me for no reason other than that we crossed paths frequently. Others were friends of friends whom I’d met once during a weekend away somewhere, and will definitely never see again. Some were acquaintances from high school who I have no real desire to keep up with, or allow them to have access to my photos/life.

I also chose to hide every tagged photo of me. All of them. I’m the only person who can see them, and really, I think that’s a pretty good policy. I felt a vulnerability knowing I had so many photos out there. Especially because the majority of them were taken six years ago, and are of me partying at university. Until recently, I’d felt this pang of anxiety when I’d receive a friend request from anyone in my current professional network. My friends would say “Just add them to your limited profile” but really, that’s even more awkward, because it’s pretty obvious to someone when they’ve been put in that category…

Finally, I updated and modified my information page. Things that I thought were funny in 2008 might not be appropriate anymore.. (e.g. my favourite quotes), and it’s important to maintain/adjust contact information.

The purpose of this post was to reflect on the state of my own online presence, but I also encourage you (whoever you are) to consider doing the same. I’d been considering deactivating my Facebook account, but if I had done that, I would miss out on a lot of stuff I care about. So: update and curate your Facebook, rather than be discouraged by privacy scares, or a profile filled with your life from 5 years ago. Doing this made Facebook feel new again. A major weight has been lifted.

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