<p>I’ve been able to help my D in her search for internships via FB friends who I haven’t actually talked to or seen in many years. Its amazing how helpful people are when asked. I never would have known these people had careers in the industry my D is interested in if not for FB.</p>
<p>I posted a few photos from a family vacation last week, and tagged D2 (9th grade) in some of them. One was a photo she didn’t really want her name on, so she asked me to remove it or untag her. She informed me that according to the training in health class in school, it is “cyber harassment” for me to leave the picture tagged if she asks me not to. Of course, I promptly untagged her as soon as she asked, but we have been joking about her mom cyber harassing her since.</p>
<p>I have loved linking up with people I was friends with in middle school and high school. I had breakfast with one on a vacation recently and it was just so much fun to see him as a distinguished middle aged man with a very successful military career! And another friend contacted me last week, and now we are planning for her to visit for a weekend.</p>
<p>I am sort of the opposite. I’m very picky about who I agree to be friends with. I don’t understand why I would want to know what people from high school (who weren’t great friends back then either) are doing now! The few REALLY good friends I had back then, I haven’t found/seen on Facebook yet.</p>
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<p>I’m not very into the facebook thing, nor am I all that concerned with where people went to college. But if you look at someone’s profile (and why wouldn’t you if you are interested in what they are up to now and what they are all about), where they went to college is listed right there. You can’t help but see it, so I don’t get how you can read a profile but “not look at” where they went to school. I grew up in a town where most kids either stayed home and went to the local U or went to one of the other large state schools in Texas. Almost all my facebook “friends” list their colleges. The young people (D1’s friends who have friended me, not the other way around) ALL put their college and year of graduation on it.</p>
<p>I know adults who are really getting into facebook now and spend a whole lot of time on it. I am not all that interested in it. I will say that it makes keeping up with camp friends, study abroad friends, etc. a lot easier. In the old days when you actually had to hand write a letter, those great kids you met at camp or wherever usually ended up being just a distant memory, so in that respect, I think facebook is a good thing for the young people.</p>
<p>When I reconnect with people from high school, I do check out their info page and I do look at where they went to school. I’m also in a Yahoo group with my elementary school mates. While a lot of my classmates went on to lead interesting lives, regardless of where they went to school, the people who went to top-tier schools – either universities or LACs – are extremely successful in very interesting fields. But it’s not surprising – the same things that made them attractive to a top school, made them successful in life.</p>
<p>Tip: Facebook recently changed the default security settings, so you should check and update yours if you don’t want too many people seeing your photos, etc. I think the default for photos changed to “friends of friends.” If you’re friends with a couple of young people, this could be thousands of people. (Insidious tip: this gives you an opportunity to look at all the photos of your kids’ friends, since many of them have not changed their security settings.)</p>
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When I was first on FB I was saying “yes” to practically every friend request because I felt awkward about hitting ignore–it seemed rude. But since then I’ve been getting friend requests from so many people that I barely knew or even had problems with, and I’ve come to realize that many people just friend their whole high school class (or all of it that’s on FB). So I’m starting to feel more OK with that ignore button. I think some people like to have as large a friend list as possible, regardless of whether they ever felt any significant personal connection to those people; I don’t see the point of that.</p>
<p>intparent, I don’t know why your daughter needed you to untag her. She could have untagged herself! Regardless of who posted the photo, you can always untag yourself. What you can’t do it take the photo down if it’s not yours.</p>
<p>And yes, that’s a good suggestion to revisit your privacy settings. Facebook made changes. I was surprised by how some of my settings defaulted, so I fixed them. It’s a pain that we have to be so vigilant if we want to use the site.</p>
<p>Yes, I guess she could have. But it was more fun to march into the kitchen and tell mom she felt “cyber harassed” 
So I said, is it okay if I untag it but leave the photo there? And she agreed, so that is what we did. If she had insisted that the photo come down, then of course I would have removed it.</p>