Response to "Meet My 5,000 New Best Pals" by Janet Kornblum

Reading “Meet My 5,000 New Best Pals” by Janet Kornblum made me really evaluate the amount of friends that I have on Facebook. I only have a Facebook, I never got into MySpace. I was always under the impression the Facebook was safer and less creepy because you had to have a network that was usually a school of some type. Kornblum points out that 90 percent of the people we are “friends with” we have virtually no contact with. I had an interesting experience one night when I was at a friend’s house. It was a rather large gathering so I didn’t know a majority of people who were there. There was one girl in particular that really got on my nerves. I wasn’t a fan of the way she carried herself and how she portrayed herself to guys. Anyway, I pointed this girl out to one of my friends and the next day I was on that friend’s Facebook page and I discovered something interesting. There is a little box on Facebook that when you are looking at someone’s page it tells you how many friends you have in common with that person. While browsing the pictures my friend had put up of that night I looked in the friends in common box and recognized the outfit of the girl we saw at the party. I was friends with her on Facebook and didn’t even know it (or her for that matter!!) Ever since then I am very careful about who I accept to be my “friend.” It is a whole separate world that has become a college phenomenon!