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• How Facebook and its peers are invading students’ lives

“The notion of privacy itself has changed,” said Grant Kien, professor at California State University, East Bay, “The reason why is because to not take part in social networking is to not exist: If you’re not present in virtuality, your existence doesn’t count.”

Facebook and its peers — including MySpace and to a certain extent, Google — present society with interesting questions regarding privacy, security and the digital self. “The media that we’re using now — and from this point forward — is characterized by portability, interactivity and networking,” said Kien, “and I guess you could say ubiquity as well.”

Facebook has more than 55 million active users. The total number of active users doubles every six months, according to the company. As the sixth-most trafficked site in the U.S., Facebook receives 65 billion page views per month, with the average user spending 20 minutes on the site per day, according to comScore, an Internet information provider that analyzes consumer behavior.

Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for nearly $1 billion last year. Before that, Viacom offered a $750 million bid. Microsoft took a $240 million equity stake in Facebook last October. That was at 1.6 percent, valuing the site as a $15 billion company, reported the New York Times.

Actions in life are converted into digital space, said Kien, who earned his doctorate at the University. Even people who don’t think they are online often are — in the form of bank records and other now-digitized records that would have once been stored in mountains of paper.

“Privacy no longer can mean anonymity,” said Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of U.S. National Intelligence. Government should take a more active role in the public’s privacy, safeguarding people’s private communications and financial information.

“Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available — and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here — the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend,” he said in an October speech. Anonymity is becoming a thing of the past.

“We’ve had similar crises regarding privacy throughout our history with every technological revolution,” said Daniel Solove, professor of information privacy law at Georgetown.

People in the 19th century thought their privacy was invaded by the new science and art of photography, he said. The popular press was also thought of as invasive. Differences do exist, however.

“There is a tremendous ease of capturing and distributing information to a level we’ve never experienced before,” said Solove, “Is it a threat now as it was back then? I think it’s greater now, but there’s always been a threat caused by new technology.”

The early adopters of this technology are young. High school and college students are the first generation to grow up using social Web sites, Solove said. They have matured in what social theorists call a heterotopia, a space that is more than one thing at the same time, he said, in this case, both public and private.

“When you answer your cell phone in public, you’re privatizing public space; at the same time, you’re publicizing your private space,” Kien said. When you talk on your cell phone, those around you can hear one-half of the conversation, a private conversation made public.

“I simply look at it as the environmental condition in which we live,” he said. “It’s like saying if the world is good or evil. It doesn’t matter; it’s how you survive.”

“Everyone has to run a lifelong public relations and self-branding campaign,” he said.

Kien said social networkers look for validation of their postured, meticulously created digital self, be it an excess of friends or a plethora of pictures. People welcome individualized advertising.

“We expect to each be treated as someone famous,” he said. “It’s a common assumption: we should get individual service, individual tailor-made everything.”

“Facebook and its peers are a generational phenomenon, their proliferation is the result of a generation immersed in technology,” said Michael Giardina, a visiting professor at the Institute of Communications Research.

“I’m 31 and I have friends who use Facebook but don’t post pictures; they use it to keep in touch,” he said. He compared that with an undergraduate who might have 500 pictures of himself and 1,000 friends. Those postings are not so much a loss of identity as they are empowerment.

What we have here is a group that has grown up immersed in technology, who have grown up with blogs and social networks. Creating a Facebook page is less a case of exhibitionism than it is empowerment. He said it might be a case of “This is me, posting who I am.”

Even more information will circulate online for the next generation. “One possible future is one where everyone’s information is open online, ready for a search. Just as likely is a darker vision,” Solove said.

“The information out there is going to be accessible around the world,” he said. People who want a clean slate, who want to start anew will not be able to. Gossip will stick, rumors will ferment; foolish, regrettable acts remain digital artifacts.

On the Internet those embarrassments are preserved, Solove said. There’s no more second chance: “They can’t turn a new leaf and escape from their past.”