Limited Profile

As a college student, I’ve seen many around me run into a social dilemma unique to this generation. As part of an effort to integrate more with their children’s’ lives, many parents of students are creating Facebook accounts to “friend” their kids because they have heard from others how it’s a useful way to connect and maintain relationships. On the flipside, however, the student wants to live up to the newfound freedom of the college freedom and does not want to be tied down by the fact that his parents may still always be watching. Some students in this position harshly choose not to accept their parents’ friend requests. Others compromise by adding their parents to a Limited Profile list.

For those who are unfamiliar with Facebook terms, the Limited Profile is an option for users that allow them to hide certain information about themselves from a certain group of people. For example, if I am Facebook friends with my parents, I would be able to restrict their access to content by adding them to a Limited Profile list and choosing which features I want to hide from people in this list. This could allow me to hide my photos from only my parents, whereas I can continue to reveal that as public information to others.

The Limited Profile offers a unique point of view of an online personality for different people so that a user could craft multiple images for himself, depending on the audience. Anybody can make themselves seem like the quiet, hardworking type to their parents and co-workers, while appearing like the crazy party animal to their friends. This allows anyone to conveniently live out multiple identities, depending on the situation, which is something that has never been easily done in human history.

Another less obvious consequence of the Limited Profile is that it involves concretely categorizing Facebook “friends” into different lists based on the level of comfort regarding open sharing of information in the relationship. By putting someone into a Limited Profile, the user is making a statement- “I am not close enough (or comfortable enough) to show this person the real me”. Having the Limited Profile list cements this relationship’s weaker comfort level, putting the connection distinctly below a normal relationship in the hierarchy of “friends”. One could say that it would be more accurate to label these bonds as “acquaintances” rather than “friends”, but the latter is obviously much more marketable and user-friendly. Facebook thus allows one to use the term “friend” broadly as an umbrella word to cover a wide spectrum of relationships, from a grumpy boss to a real best buddy.