After finding out about the passing of a high school friend’s partner and responding to an invitation to her memorial over Facebook, I spent the better part of an hour browsing through their pictures. This got me thinking about my less savoury Facebook activities. Then I did a little research and decided to confess to Osgoode that I can be one heck of a Facebook creep – not necessarily in that order.
I am guilty of Facebook creeping. I’d like to think I don’t do it as much as when I was a teenager but it still happens. I browse the travel pictures of a girl I might have said five to ten words to in high school. I look at family photos of the woman I worked with 3 years ago. I critique the wedding choices of the couple I knew in the first year of my undergrad. And it gets worse. Often when I meet up with long-term friends, we discuss the happenings of others without once having spoken to them. I will reveal that I “only found out from Facebook” but, admittedly, only if it comes up. I’m not proud of these actions and they make up a very small percentage of the time I spend on Facebook. That being said, when I objectively look at this behaviour, it’s unsettling.
Although I suspect that I am the rule rather than the exception, brief research didn’t turn up much information on creeping/lurking (called passive following by more reputable writers). In a 2009 TED talk, Stephana Broadbent quoted a statistic that the average person has 150 Facebook friends but only communicates with four to six of them on a regular basis. According to Broadbent, this statistic comes from Carmen Marlow, the self-proclaimed “In-House Sociologist” of Facebook. However, I could not find a print source for Marlow’s claim. Moreover, this data is 5 years old and potentially irrelevant. What I did find is that the average Facebook user gives less than what she or he receives. According to a 2012 Pew Research publication, Facebook users receive more friend requests than they initiate, like fewer posts than the number of likes on their own posts, and get more messages than they send. Does this give any real credence to my theory of rampant hordes of Facebook lurkers? Unfortunately, no. So for now, I’m merely speculating about its prevalence.
Moving on to the real question- are my actions right, wrong or are they of no moral consequence? If I’m Facebook friends with someone, is it ok for me to relentlessly delve into their lives, even if I would only say a quick “hi” if I passed them on the streets? Am I invading the privacy of these individuals?
Let me make it clear. I’m not discussing a potential employer, a not-so-happy ex, a stranger or anyone else outside your friend list trying to look at your profile. Nor am I talking about the many people who are not your Facebook friends that you can access through actual friends. Those are both Pandora’s boxes that must remain closed. I’m talking about the people who have accepted your request or whose request you’ve accepted (aside: the language of Facebook can be unbelievably clunky). One might say that by friending someone, we’re consenting to revealing everything on our profile, and realistically, that is exactly what we’re doing. It’s completely clear that when you accept/send a friend request, you’re permitting that person to see every Halloween costume, misguided clicktivism, vacation photo and interest you’ve cared about enough to like. Maybe we don’t think about this when we click that button, but we know that’s the deal. (I recognize that you can change privacy settings for friends. Roll with me here and assume that you haven’t.) That’s all well and good, no misconceptions there. And one could argue that if you didn’t want someone looking through your profile, you would either delete the content or the friend. But as I click my way through picture after picture, post after post, it seems wrong.
Regardless of the morality of these activities, in all reality, being a passive follower could cause you to be less happy. A 2013 German study found that the more passively an individual uses Facebook, the more likely they are to be envious of others and suffer from lower life satisfaction. This envy can also lead to negative outcomes like depression, isolation and social tension. While I’ve felt the odd twinge of envy while romping through the profiles of near-strangers, I’ve never felt a more severe negative emotion such as the German study claims. In a 2012 article, the Huffington Post described a Facebook lurk as someone who engages in far more insidious activities than the offences I’ve committed. The article describes a lurk as someone who pretends not to be online often–even going so far as to be annoyed with or mock others for being active on Facebook–all the while passively following them. So perhaps I’m not the monster I thought I was a few paragraphs ago. That being said, the study conducted in Germany also found that being an active follower on Facebook leads to a stronger support system and higher life satisfaction, and those outcomes are much more appealing. At the end of the day, it’s likely in my best interest to move on from my small bursts of lurking and limit my Facebook time to active-use only, especially considering the unlikeliness of anyone wanting to add me after this.