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Point of View: Facebook: When does 'research' become stalking?

Oct. 28, 2009

By Bethany Moore

Today's average college student wakes up to an alarm that is always too early and immediately picks up his or her computer and notifies the world of every movement made since opening his or her eyes.

Facebook status update, tweets and blogs: With our generation living online, is there anything we don't tell about ourselves? For that matter, is there anything you can't learn about perfect strangers from their online posts? If people are so willing to share, is it bad to take a peek?

Long gone are the conversational days when you could ask people where they are from, their major, or who they are dating. Now, with a few clicks of the mouse you can know their high school activities, favorite quotes and their mother's maiden name.

Advantages to this type of openness are that one can find out if new friends and boyfriends are your type of "good" people. Also whether potential roommates are convicted felons or potential boyfriends are creeps.

In the movie "Little Black Book" the same dilemma is presented when the main character decides to dig through her current boyfriend's BlackBerry.

To her shock, Brittany Murphy's character finds more than one ex girlfriend's skeleton in her man's closet, which leads her on a journey, questioning their relationship and her life. The question left to the viewer asks: Are omissions betrayal?

A perfect example of the success of background Facebook checking is my roommate freshman year. She had been asked out numerous times by a guy in her astronomy class, who she thought was cute and could possibly date.

After serious thought and contemplation, we turned to Facebook to do a little digging. Even though they were not Facebook friends, we were able to pull up his whole page, which included quite a few albums of the boy and a certain girl in the obvious couple poses, before Sing competition in their costumes, visits home to her family, them kissing at their year anniversary.

His wall did not have a relationship status at all.

However, once we redirected to her page, we saw in the illuminating glow of the computer screen, "Relationship status: In a relationship." This appeared next to her profile picture of both of them.

Thankfully, my roommate never went out on a date with the guy. Yet, I ask you, what would have happened if she hadn't done her research and after a few dates finally found out how bad the guy was for her? As "Little Black Book" says, "Check under the hood before you purchase the car."

On the other hand, is this morally wrong? Are we hindering the relationship by finding out things that could come from growing in a relationship with someone "the old-fashioned way"? Also, is this extreme "researching" into others' lives considered stalking?

We were taught by our parents when we first got online as young teens to beware of online predators. Have we now become the predators?

We say we don't have bad intentions and no one will find out just how much time you have spent looking into their page, so it's OK.

However, if you are spending hours jumping from Twitter posts to Facebook page to the personal blog of someone you are interested in, I would say you are stalking. You may have ditched the binoculars and habit of parking outside someone's house, but you still have an issue.

I leave you with this train of thought ญญญญญญญ-- if you can't admit your Facebook habits to potential boyfriend, roommate or friend, then don't do it.

Bethany Moore is a Van senior majoring in journalism and a reporter for the Baylor Lariat.

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