“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”
Facebook is a social networking site. The word “social” means to be public or in a group. That means that things put up on Facebook are open for anyone to see, unless the account is private. However, Nicolaus Mills, author of “Does Facebook hurt your college chances?”, does not agree that everyone should be allowed to look people up on Facebook. In Mills’s article he states that he doesn’t think college admission officers should check applying students’ Facebook profiles. He believes that they should judge only on the applications received. However, admission officers should be able to use all their resources to fully understand the students they are about to let into their school.
Facebook has and always will be a public site. If your profile is public anyone can see it, including college admission officers. Thats just the way it is and everybody should know it. For Mills to think that “widespread howls of protests” (Mills 1) would be heard from parents and students is absolutely absurd. Why would high school students be upset when a Kaplan survey shows that admission officers use Facebook and Google to check up on prospective students when it’s common knowledge? Facebook is a public site, but you have a choice to make your profile public. If you feel that there is something on your profile that could hurt your college chances, change your profile to private or better yet delete the incriminating post, picture or comment. Of course admission officers would want to know whom their letting into their school. They want hard workers that take life seriously to represent their school, not the lazy party goers. Each school has an image to hold, and no college wants to be known for accepting just anyone off the street. The lack of objections about this survey does not show that “students and their parents are already so frazzled about finding the right college and the money to pay for it that they don’t have the energy to fight a new battle” (Mills 5); it shows that students and their parents already know the survey results and simply don’t care. Dedicated students, the students that colleges want, will not care that college admission officers are reviewing their Facebook page because there is nothing to hide. The students who worry are evidently not the students that colleges want to represent them anyway. The simplest solution to this “problem” is to be aware of what you post on Facebook. Just don’t post things you wouldn’t want your teacher, or boss, to see and your good to go. Facebook is public, so behave like you’re in public.
Tamara Koubi 