How connected is too connected? Facebook, family, friends, and freedom.

The ostensible purpose of Facebook is to keep its users connected virtually, but there is a certain amount of pressure attached to a global social network. As with many network situations, Facebook began with a much smaller of users, giving them a certain amount of privacy and social exclusivity. As many remember, its original following consisted mainly of young people seeking a sleeker and more professional alternative to the Myspace networking craze. Yet as Facebook gained a larger following, its users no longer enjoyed the split between their face-to-face relationships and their online social network. Parents, grandparents, teachers, and authority figures joined the social network, effectively bringing a “big brother” to Facebook’s original social outlet atmosphere.

The arrival of close family and friends to Facebook transformed the social network from a sole means of communication to a medium for expressions of individuality and cultural “rebellion.” It is in this way that Facebook became a fad among the younger generations. The personalized profile information and ability to upload thousands of private photos gave users another mode for self-expression, akin to the individualizing capabilities of music taste, fashion sense, and colloquial speech.

As children become teenagers and young adults, they experience a central social shift from the confines of their home and nuclear family unit to a circle of friends and girlfriends/boyfriends. Media such as Facebook, in which family and friends cohabitate the same network, create a social gray area for younger generations, in which self-expression is still possible but limited to their comfort with sharing their personal information with parents and other family. Considering this “clash” of worlds, does Facebook upset the maturing process for youths in the 21st century, or does it ease the transformation from child to adult?

Given the advanced security and profile privacy features of Facebook, users are not forced to completely “mix” the dimensions of their social lives. This ability to limit public access to one’s personal information becomes complicated with new programs used by businesses to profile students and employees. This appears to be the price paid by a network user for publishing his or her social life through a commonly “hacked” and exploited medium. As Facebook’s user network expands, so will the risks for socially awkward “overlapping” of private and family lives. It is up to the individual whether the convenience of Facebook and other social network sites is worth the possible breaches of privacy.