I am 'facebook-optional'. But what about my children?

I find myself noticing, with a more personal take on privacy, that I do not possess quite as much of it as I originally found myself to be believing. I certainly do not have any important trade secrets, nor a past of intense moral shame, but I still find myself being included in ‘witness protection’ in my social circles- keeping just as many secrets as secrets are kept against me.

No matter the size of the outlying community, this complex seems to be present in any and all kinds of human networking. Technology is the most modern culprit. Being available for scrutiny online is a necessary evil- just as a socially-competent student would want to keep up with peers, each individual must contribute to the pool of gossip by speaking about themselves in kind. As time wears on, it is logical to expect public technology to follow individuals even before they are aware- I am a member of the last ‘Facebook-optional’ generation. From conception to grave, life will find a way to follow all future life in developed nations.

The inherent question here is simple- does the decrease of privacy in all aspects of society indicate a growth of evil in this nation and many others? It is hard to see the will of a higher power in the matter. Word of mouth once served as the sole source of gossip, and has been the most effective for all of recorded history- television and internet connections are extremely new phenomenon. But speech was not a ‘human’ invention: men and women have spoken to each other, themselves, and their higher powers for the entirety of their existence. The written word became the next medium by which both godly and ungodly would be distributed, followed by many others. This may help answer the question- the more promise a medium shows, the harder the fall from grace. There is no doubt that more technology will come- it is the manner that man utilizes such opportunity that will tell the tale of good or evil , public or private.

The decline of privacy in our world is regrettable- but if man attempts to hearken back to an acceptance that technology is a tool of incredible power, to be treated and relished carefully, this decline may be reversed entirely, or shaped into a more godly progression for the future.

(http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)

Company Figures

• More than 350 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 55 million status updates posted each day
• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Average User Figures

• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
• Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
• Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
• Average user is invited to 3 events per month
• Average user is a member of 12 groups

International Growth

• More than 70 translations available on the site
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

Platform

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 500,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
• More than 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external websites every month
• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect

Mobile

• There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products