J: I don’t doubt that this is precisely the sort of thing that gave birth to that counsel. Having thought about this a lot, I don’t think we need to *boycott* social networks like Facebook, but rather learn how to use them safely. After all, as you say, they can be good when used with caution and restraint. And the plain fact of the matter is that kids *are* going to be on Facebook (they already are, and there’s no sign of stopping), so if all of us adults pull out, it’ll just be the kids and the predators. It’s better for us to stay and keep our eyes open than for us to flee, I think. And of course we should be careful with who we add as a friend, because if they go on to add someone else, that person will see us as a mutual friend and perhaps trust the other person more than they ought.

Personally, I’m not worried about myself at all, but I would certainly feel absolutely wretched if something were to happen to someone I know because of me. But I don’t think the fear of that happening is enough to make me delete my account — if it were, then I may as well delete all my websites and e-mail accounts and go hide in a hole in the Himalayas.

I can see some real dangers in wanting to be popular and attracting unknown friends then giving them information about and photographs of innocent unsuspecting potential victims of rape or worse…

I will not be allowing any unknown commodity into my circle of friends. I will keep my account very limited in scope and scale back the information that I put up and those whom I allow in. Please read the article and be cautious when promoting these utilities. There is more to the caution that you received than initially meets the eye.

I am now curious as to the many friend requests that I receive daily that I have turned down. I don’t know who they are or how they got my name to even make the request. I wonder… Please be careful and admonish your friends to be careful. I would hate to have anyone’s live ruined or taken for such a frivolous thing as this. And, I certainly wouldn’t want to be held accountable for promoting that which destroyed a life.

This is an interesting post coming from you. A few months ago, I deleted my MySpace account after reading one of your posts. When Heather opened her Facebook account so that she could share her internship photos, I wasn’t sure what to think about it. I was mentally juggling your Stake President’s counsel, and your post, with Heather’s reasoning and my knowledge of her goodness. I concluded that the counsel that your stake had received was specifically for members of your stake and a matter for you to judge. To extend it further was not correct and to make it a commandment was folly.

When I was younger, I wondered that the Law of Moses was given to the Israelites to bring them to Christ and then later used by them to crucify Christ. How could that be? The answer is that the Law had been added upon. My childhood was filled with restrictions because others (those in authority over me) personal preferences became commandments from God. It has been a sad but interesting journey to discover the origin of the extra commandments that usurped my agency as I was being raised. Almost everyone who was under that umbrella of unrighteous dominion ended up rebelling at their peril to claim their agency. When their agency was reclaimed, their lives straightened out. This process almost cost me my life.

I love Facebook. I agree with everything that you said in this post. I love the control that I have over my account. Because I plan to use my account to share family documents for genealogy and to share children’s photos, I deny almost all friend requests. I have only accepted one request for someone that I didn’t know, but I knew of her. I bluntly asked her to tell me why she wanted to be my friend and received a very nice essay back telling me why. All other non-family friends on my account are friends of Heather’s that have photos of her that I was interested in having access to. That said, I’m sure that many of the older generation will use this utility differently than your generation.

I wonder how much better my generation would be if we had this utility (and blogging) to maintain and extend our friendships, thoughts and associations throughout our lives. As for wasting time, my generation usually spends two to three hours a night watching news on TV. Then they fill their minds full of hate radio while driving to and fro. Their associations are limited by proximity to property and their conversations are filled with negative - Chicken Little…the sky is falling, the opposing political party, religion or younger generations are bad variety of nonsense.

Quite frankly, I see some great advantages in broadened interactions that extend globally. I love the fact that the interactions are people driven rather than corporation and politician driven. That said, I think that I will probably start another Facebook account for my family and start collecting some new friends of my own on my existing account.

Volunteers or referrals anyone?