Facebook and The unwanted friend

In this blog I wanted to look at something that has become quite a talked about subject within my friendship group recently, the Facebook phenomenon and people that, you may have seen but don’t actually know, adding you on Facebook. Why because you meet somebody once or have briefly looked in their direction do they feel the need to then add you on Facebook and view all the details of your personal life. I understand that we have the option to ignore their request if we wish but I don’t understand the need for them to add us in the first place. When looking at this i went back and looked over the acrticle in our handbook ' Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of networked Publics in Teenage Social Life' Dannah Boyd's article, she dicusses the fact that when asked it was found 'teens join Myspace to maintain connections with their friends' so why are people adding people that they dont know? When thinking about this I then decided to go onto my profile and have a look at my friends list, in doing so, I noticed that some of these people I had added and I could see the details of their lives and what they are doing. I then decided to go through and delete the numerous amounts of people that I really didn’t care what they were doing so why I was friends with them I didn’t know. After going through and deleting old school friends, friends of friends and even family members that I have not seen or spoke to in years. I realised I had actually deleted nearly 100 of my ‘friends’. So maybe I was as bigger culprit as any for adding/accepting people I barely knew.

 I then looked at it in another way, the fact that on Facebook, people put their daily routine and it would be visible to all of their ‘friends’. So for example, ‘Amanda Bowe is going on holiday tomorrow.’ Everybody knows that I will be away from my house, that my car will be there for a week untouched and also my house will be empty. You may as well put a sign on your front door saying ‘Away for a week, help yourself’. Yet we don’t see this a strange thing to broadcast over Facebook. Ok, so I understand that the chances of the people you have on Facebook as ‘friends’ robbing your house is unlikely but if we continue to add people that we really no nothing about, how do we know? The reason I made the decision to delete all of these people from my Facebook is when looking at their status updates I realised that I didn’t have any interest in what they were doing and I certainly didn’t want them to know what I was doing. Of course there are my close friends that I like to know what their plans are or see the photos that they have uploaded for as for the others I simply don’t care.

 I recently discovered a better way to ignore these friend requests without them knowing, you just never accept or decline their request, therefore they are not offended by your rejection but you don’t have to allow them into your Facebook life. As a result of this I currently have 12 unaccepted friend requests.