Students' Facebook 'friends': public and private spheres - CiteSeerX

Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 12, No. 6, December 2009, 615627

Students’ Facebook ‘friends’: public and private spheres Anne West*, Jane Lewis and Peter Currie Social Policy, London School of Economics, London, UK Friendship is highly significant during the university years. Facebook, widely used by students, is designed to facilitate communication with different groups of ‘friends’. This exploratory study involved interviewing a sample of student users of Facebook: it focuses on the extent to which older adults, especially parents, are accepted as Facebook friends, and the attitudes towards such friendships and potential friendships and what these reveal about notions of privacy. Parents were rarely reported to be Facebook friends, and there was a view that in general they would not be welcomed. The reasons were related to embarrassment, social norms, and worries about mothers. Underlying these were various notions of the private and the public. Students did not appear to conceive of there being two distinct realms: indeed, the ‘public’ appeared to be the individual’s private social world. A level of sophistication is apparent, with nuanced understandings of concepts, suggesting that social networking sites such as Facebook are associated with new ways of construing some of the notions surrounding the traditional public/private dichotomy. Notions of what is private and what is public are fuzzy, with no clear-cut public/private dichotomy. Computer-mediated communication appears to make this fuzziness more apparent than has hitherto been the case. Keywords: friends; students; parents; social networking sites

Introduction Friendship is particularly important for young people in their late teens and twenties, who are more likely than those who are older to select ‘their more significant others outside their families of origin’ (Pahl and Pevalin 2005, p. 446). Specifically, during the university years, a key transition point, friendship becomes highly significant, with closer and deeper relationships being established than at previous points in young people’s lives (Brooks 2007). At the same time, it has been argued, the boundaries between friends and family become blurred, with an overlap of family and friends (Spencer and Pahl 2006). In this paper, our interest is in friendship in the context of the social networking site Facebook, which is widely used by university students and designed to facilitate communication with different groups of contacts. While research has examined how communications technology affects relationships (e.g. Adams 1998), our focus here is more specifically on Facebook ‘friends’. These are not necessarily the same as ‘reallife’ friends, but, as in real life, they are of different types. A key feature of the structure of Facebook is that, in general, information is available to all Facebook ‘friends’, including those who are family members. *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ISSN 1367-6261 print/ISSN 1469-9680 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13676260902960752 http://www.informaworld.com

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This raises issues of who is accepted as a Facebook friend and also the type of material Facebook users display. This in turn relates to what information is considered to be private and what public. While privacy is a recurring theme in the media and policy debates about social networking sites, the term has multiple meanings: the focus in the media has tended to be on privacy as personal security. However, the notion of privacy is much broader, with connotations of the personal, of secrets, and of intimacy. This exploratory study focuses specifically on students’ attitudes towards Facebook friends or potential friends who are older adults, particularly parents, but also employers, and what these reveal about notions of privacy. The objectives of the paper were, first, to establish to what extent older adults and specifically parents are accepted as Facebook friends, and, second, to investigate the attitudes towards such friendships and potential friendships. In particular, we wanted to examine the factors related to privacy that militated against or facilitated having certain types of older adults as Facebook friends. In the following sections, we examine literature relating to differing notions of ‘private’ and ‘public’; to young people’s understandings of privacy; and to parents as ‘friends’. We then describe the key features of Facebook and the methods we adopted. The findings are discussed in the next section. We argue that in the context of Facebook friends and potential friends, a simple public/private dichotomy does not adequately capture the nuanced ways in which students conceptualize what they consider to be public and what private. In particular, we hypothesize that the notions of private and public that are used by young people do not necessarily map on to those articulated in the academic literature. In the context of friendships and potential friendships with older adults and particularly parents, a variety of concerns related to notions of privacy were raised which militated against them being considered appropriate as Facebook ‘friends’. Public and private spheres The ubiquity of the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ is reflected in both their everyday use and in the academic literature. Increasingly, it has been recognized that there are different ways of understanding each concept. For Pitkin (1981), the private is ‘‘‘in here’’, personal, intimate, closest to the self, secluded from unwanted others, where we have ‘‘privacy’’ and are free to be ourselves’ (p. 328). By way of contrast the public is ‘‘‘out there’’, impersonal, distant, formal’ (p. 328). Much of the literature treats the public and private as dichotomous spheres. The debate about this dichotomy is long-standing and contested. It has been explored in different ways by scholars from different disciplinary perspectives. Weintraub (1997) proposes four dimensions to analyse this complexity: the liberal-economistic, where there is a distinction in terms of state administration and market economy; the civic perspective, which sees the public sphere in terms of political community and citizenship; the interactional perspective, which sees the public as ‘fluid and polymorphous sociability’ (p. 17) and the private as being the domains of intimacy and domesticity; and, from a feminist perspective, the public world of paid work and political participation and the private domain of the family (e.g. Lewis 1992, Landes 2003).

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In a completely different vein, the public/private dichotomy has been described as a ‘discursive phenomenon that, once established, can be used to characterize, categorize, organize, and contrast virtually any kind of social fact: spaces, institutions, bodies, groups, activities, interactions, relations’ (Gal 2002, p. 81). The idea of the private sphere as a spatial entity, for example, has been used in relation to mobile telephones (Williams and Williams 2005) and can also be applied to social networking sites. In a different context that of YouTube Lange (2007) has argued for different types of behaviours in relation to video sharing with varying degrees of ‘publicness’, with what she terms ‘publicly private’ and ‘privately public’ behaviour.1 In this paper, we focus on notions of privacy in the context of Facebook, which, as we shall see, may be conceived of by users as being both ‘private’ and ‘public’. Relatively little appears to be known about the ways in which young people construe the notion of privacy. In the context of social networking sites, Livingstone (2008) argues that, among teenagers, definitions of privacy appear not to be tied to the disclosure of information of particular types but rather to having control over who knows what about the child and being in control of managing disclosure: one of her respondents commented that he did not want his parents to see his profile as it was his ‘private space’, which he wanted to be public to his friends but private to his parents. She also argues that different levels of intimacy characterize friendships on social networking sites. Family, ‘friends’ and privacy In relation to social networking sites, one area which has received relatively little attention has been attitudes towards older adults and specifically parents, as Facebook friends. Two key ideas about parents as friends in real life are discernible in the academic literature. One relates to students wishing to become independent and so distancing themselves from their parents, and the other to parents becoming friends with their children. During the teenage years, friends may be the main element of young people’s emotional support networks (Allan 2008). A study of US college students (Pulakos 1989) found that relationships with friends were closer and more important than those with their siblings, suggesting that whether the family relationship is with a mother, father or sibling, the young person is concerned with becoming independent of family influences. However, it has been argued that conventional relations between children and parents have been replaced by negotiation, with increased intimacy and greater emotional parent/child communication, and parents ‘becoming progressively more open with their children as they attempt to become ‘‘friends’’ as well as their parents’ (Williams and Williams 2005, pp. 315316). Research on the family lives of young people raises important issues in relation to the notion of privacy. Tensions between privacy, secrecy and trust in relationships between teenagers and parents have been noted, with both teenagers and parents suggesting that some silences and secrets were necessary (Gillies et al. 2001), and with these tensions leading to ‘some dances around communication, disclosure, secrecy and surveillance’ (Ribbens McCarthy and Edwards 2001, p. 768). In the context of Facebook, the issue of parents as Facebook ‘friends’ has been raised in the media, often as a cause of conflict with children. In one case, a

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journalist asked her daughter to be her Facebook friend, to which the daughter replied: ‘You won’t get away with this . . . everyone in the whole world thinks it’s super creepy when adults have facebooks’ (New York Times 2007). In another case, a student commented: ‘If my parents could see my Facebook profile, it would be as if they were eavesdropping on a conversation between me and my friends. I hope that my parents understand that even though my Facebook profile is pseudo-public information, it’s intended for people who are sharing my college experience’ (Huffington Post 2007). In a similar vein, another noted: ‘It doesn’t really make sense to me why my parents would want in on it. Most young people expect it to be a place where they interact with their friends, without worrying about what their parents will think’ (Miami Herald 2008). There are also issues associated with privacy and older adults; for example, in relation to employers, there have been media reports of complicated situations arising as a result of ostensibly ‘private’ information being disclosed to a wider audience than the user anticipated. This exploratory research attempts to shed light on these issues; before presenting our findings, we describe the social networking site Facebook and the methods we adopted. Facebook Facebook was launched in February 2004 for Harvard students, expanded the following month to Stanford, Columbia and Yale, and to British universities in October 2005 (Facebook 2009a). In September 2006, it was opened up to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address. In July 2008, more than half of Facebook users were outside universities (Facebook 2009b). Facebook has increased dramatically in size: in October 2006, there were only 448,000 users in the UK (Guardian Unlimited 2007) and by July 2009 over 18 million (Burcher 2009). Facebook users create profiles and ‘collect’ friends: a request to become a ‘friend’ must be accepted before the person concerned is listed as a friend. The profile usually includes a picture of the user, along with the number of friends and personal details. The Wall is a prominent space on the profile where the user or friends can write comments or add photographs, music or video clips. The Friends page lists friends. The News Feed gives information to the user’s friends about certain Facebook activities and gives the user information about activities of his or her Facebook friends. There is also an internal electronic mail system (similar to email) for sending private messages to Facebook friends. The user can join a network and then she or he can see the profiles of other people in the network, and theirs is likewise available to all in the network (unless the user restricts access to their friends alone). Although Facebook is no longer restricted to students, it is not open and ‘public’ in the same way as the Internet, as prospective users need to open an account. However, once an account has been opened, a user can search for named individuals and can see photographs of their ‘friends’. Access to a user’s account can also be limited to certain Facebook friends and access blocked to others. It is important to stress that until December 2007 the structure of Facebook was such that it reduced the options for the user’s friendship groups to be separated, as it was not possible to differentiate between Facebook friends.


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Methods The research involved interviewing a sample of 16 students, seven males and nine females, between the ages of 21 and 26 (mean age 22). In terms of ethnic background, 10 were classified as White, three as Mixed, two as Black and one as Asian.2 They were at the end of their second or third year of their undergraduate degree programmes in the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Students were recruited via a purposive snowballing approach, with only undergraduate students who lived in London and who were known to be active Facebook users being approached. Initial contact was via one of two undergraduate students at different universities, both of whom were current and active users of Facebook. All but one attended universities in London; one attended a provincial university, but was also a member of the London network of Facebook. All had joined Facebook late in 2005 and reported that they were regular, everyday users, although the length of time they spent using Facebook varied from around 20 minutes to several hours per day. The semi-structured interviews, which lasted between 32 and 76 minutes (mean 57 minutes), were carried out (by PC) between August and October 2007. Questions related to a number of issues concerned with the use of Facebook (see also Lewis and West 2009). This paper focuses on one key area, namely Facebook friends and in particular older adults and older adult family members. The interviews, which were carried out face to face, were digitally recorded (with interviewees’ permission) and transcribed. Each interview transcript was read and analysed with reference to understandings of public and private, particularly in relation to the question of ‘private to whom’? In order to preserve the anonymity of the students interviewed, their names have been changed. Findings Facebook friends The students in our sample reported 15 to 400 ‘real-life friends’ (mean of 82) and 70 to 400 Facebook friends (mean of 200). Almost all had met their Facebook friends in person, and none reported having joined Facebook to make new friends. The average number of Facebook friends was far higher than the number of real-life friends, but nearly all respondents reported that most of their real-life ‘close friends’ (mean of 19, range 4 to 50) were on Facebook.3 This was not invariably the case: for example, one reported that older close friends were not users, and another that a close friend refused to join when it was solely for university students, because ‘she hated university, so she was like ‘‘no I’m not doing it, it’s really cliquey and no one will be my friend’’’ (Kate). In addition to close friends, respondents reported that Facebook friends included acquaintances of different types; ‘university friends . . . old school friends . . . and then there’s also the weird friends of friends’ (James); another commented on ‘random’ friends: ‘I guess a lot of them still aren’t my friends, I just know them . . . a lot of them are acquaintances or random4 people I have bumped into and met and like to keep in contact with and possibly see again in the future’ (Oliver). Facebook friends were generally peers of a similar age: ‘I would say most, about maybe 80 per cent of the people I know are in my age group, like 21, 22, within my year at secondary school or whatever’ (Charles). Some interviewees reported that

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their Facebook friends included family members of a similar age siblings and cousins were mentioned: ‘I’ve only just added my cousin . . . . we’re not that close but . . . she’s on it, she’s the same age as me, similar kind of intelligence, same sort of lively personality kind of thing’ (Sophie). However, some Facebook friends were not peers, and it is these we turn to in the following section.

Parents as Facebook friends We were interested in finding out whether any older adults, and particularly parents, were Facebook friends in light of the claims that have been made for greater intimacy and emotional communication between parents and children, on the one hand, and the concerns about parents as Facebook friends on the other. Only one interviewee reported that her mother was a Facebook friend and that was as a result of a slightly unusual history: My mum’s just got into the Internet and she loves seeing photos of my sister and I doing what we’re doing and for her it was a really good way for her to keep in touch with and keep up to date, so for a while, unbeknownst to us, she did have my password and she did log on, and one day I did receive a message in my inbox from her boyfriend which was a bit peculiar, so since then she’s got her own profile and I’ve got my own password, we don’t mix! (Hannah)

Respondents were asked how they would feel about having their parents as Facebook friends. Attitudes varied. Several thought it unlikely that their parents would even use Facebook, so the prospect of their wanting to be ‘friends’ would not arise: ‘Well, she doesn’t know how to use the Internet so I know that won’t happen!’ (Charlotte) and ‘No, my mum can’t turn the computer on, and my dad is really anti-Facebook, ’cos of the whole privacy issue, which is a problem’ (Jessica). More generally, ‘There’s that idea that you want to keep certain things away from your parents’ (Luke). One respondent was positive about her mother being on Facebook: ‘I’d have her as a friend, yes, nice to have a chat with my mum. I don’t think she would, she’s only just got the hang of emails, so Facebook might be a step too far’ (Lauren). And another, with a profile he considered to be uncontroversial, whose uncle was a Facebook friend, commented: ‘I’d accept her . . . I know a lot of people would be against that but I don’t really mind what my mum would see... if I did have something I wanted to keep secret from my mum I wouldn’t have it on my Facebook profile’ (James). Most of those interviewed had anxieties about the thought of their parents being on Facebook. One of these, when asked whether she would have her mother and father as friends if they were on Facebook, said that she would if asked, but then talked about negotiating with her parents: I’d probably have a conversation with them about it before I did it. It . . . seems so awkward to add your parents . . . but I’d have a conversation about it. I’d be like, ‘Look guys, I don’t want to be rude but I think it’s an invasion of my privacy if you’re looking at my Facebook profile, because it’s to do with my friends, and whatever I’m doing at university’ and they’d be fine with it. (Sophie)

This view of negotiating with parents has been discussed by Williams and Williams (2005), who argue that children are increasingly able to negotiate skilfully in their relations with their parents although the extent to which this might happen in


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relation to Facebook is of course open to speculation. Other interviewees were, however, less sanguine: Oh my God, that’s weird! I don’t know! Possibly limit I mean, ugh, that’s a bit voyeuristic in a way because that’s like my private life . . . . No, I’m not sure about family because . . . this is for keeping in touch with members of the wider public . . . I don’t think it’s a family thing at all. (Alice)

This, then, suggests a notion of public that excludes the family. These responses raise the question as to why having parents as Facebook friends posed such problems for the students we interviewed. The importance of ‘separate worlds’ is fundamental. Facebook depicts aspects of the individual’s own social life and wider social world: one respondent noted that although there was ‘the occasional photo of me looking really drunk . . . that’s not really stuff that I really have to hide from my family.’ He saw ‘Facebook as being reserved for my social life with my own friends . . . although it is shown in a very public way, I still feel a bit private about the things that go on there’ (William). Underpinning the need to separate an individual’s social from family life, and keeping details of his or her social life private, are several themes, namely embarrassment, secrets, norms and a concern about upsetting mothers. In some cases, the potential embarrassment appeared acute, with a fear that parents may see something already on Facebook that respondents explicitly wish to keep hidden from their mothers: ‘No, I don’t want my mum seeing pictures of me stumbling around at the weekends and like God knows what I’m smoking’ (Kate), and ‘What I’m talking about is like crazy antics of drunkenness, just being passed out on a floor, anything like that’ (Alice). One interviewee commented that although he would accept his mother as friend, it would also intrude on his social and personal life: ‘I would add her, but I would also be quite scared she would be like posting on my wall, just general things like ‘‘How are you, love, are you all right? ah, I got your letters today’’ it would be a little embarrassing’ (Oliver). Tied in with this embarrassment was the ‘collision of contexts’ (boyd 2006) that occurs from parents being on Facebook. One interviewee commented that a friend had ‘posts from his mum, ‘‘Have you remembered to apply for your student loan?’’ and that’s in between ‘‘Oh my God, you were so pissed last night’’’ (Matthew). Tied in with ideas of embarrassment was the view that Facebook was not something that mothers ‘do’: the normative view was that Facebook was not appropriate for them and that boundaries were needed: I’m not embarrassed that my mum’s on Facebook any more because there seem to be a lot more parents, oldies on Facebook. But at first it was just my mum, and I was pretty embarrassed by that . . . I just knew that it was something I didn’t want my mum involved in, she could look at my photos, and that sort of stuff but I didn’t want her actively partaking in it. Just because that’s not what mums do. (Hannah)

Perhaps conflicting with the idea of parents being ‘friends’, one interviewee disputed that her mother could even be a ‘friend’: ‘It would be very strange to have her because she isn’t my friend she’s my mum . . . I wouldn’t expect her to be my friend because that’s just weird. She’s . . . my mum, she’s not another person I’d know’ (Sophie). Keeping certain information secret from parents is another issue: ‘I’ve had a lot of friends who are gay . . . their family have started joining Facebook and they don’t

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want their family to know . . . they don’t want their lives flaunted in front of all these people’ (Alice). The key point is that when individuals have ‘secret lives’, Facebook is too accessible. Even the Facebook function that limits the information available fails to assist, as using this ‘would just only cause them to ask questions . . . like what are you not showing us? and things like that’. In this case, what is considered to be private is that which is intimate, personal, secret and so unknown to mothers and fathers. Another theme to emerge in our analysis related to mothers possibly invading their children’s privacy because they cared about their well-being. However, this also posed difficulties: I wouldn’t really want her knowing what I was getting up to! I think that would be a step too far in the friends/family boundary . . . mums care on a different level, they care about your safety and your health and all that kind of thing. My mum might be quite distraught if she saw some of the photos!... mums would be more inclined to check it and invade your privacy, because they care more about what’s going on. (Lorna)

Others found it troubling that parents would have contact with the user’s friends directly rather than in the capacity of a parent, whose relationship to the child’s friend arguably exists through, and is mediated through and controlled by the student him or herself: I’d be a bit worried . . . I wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing that relatives who I cared for are on there as well . . . there’s so much you can say to a friend, but relatives, it becomes a bit personal . . . . If your mum is on Facebook she’s susceptible to being accepted by random people who you may not know about . . . I think family should be totally separate. (Joseph)

The notion of adult children worrying about parents has been identified elsewhere (e.g. Hay et al. 2007). In this case, the interviewee wanted to keep his social and family life separate: I wouldn’t want people to know information about my parents . . . . Like if [my mum] puts some pictures of herself when she was younger, I would feel uncomfortable with people looking at that, y’know, looking at your mum when she was at a party because I think that’s private. That’s private to her and it’s private to me so I’d keep those two things separate. (Joseph)

The response in this case, appears to reveal an element of parentification with an apparent desire to protect the mother from intrusion by the individual’s friends. Associated with the notion of caring about the feelings of others, was that of not wanting to reject a mother who wanted to be a friend: ‘I would add her, I don’t think I would talk to her too often, but you can’t really reject your own mother can you?’ (Matthew). This was not a universal view, as some respondents would ‘reject’ a ‘friending request’ from their mother (Kate, Lorna, Matthew).

Other older adults as Facebook friends The question arises as to whether what is considered to be private in relation to parents also relates to other older adults. Interestingly, while older adult family members were rarely Facebook friends, other older adults were: ‘I’m friends with [a Facebook friend’s] dad. I think [the friend’s] aunty added me randomly’ (Charles).


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In some cases, friends’ mothers were reported to be friends; in this case, the notion of not being able to reject an older adult known to the interviewee was apparent, as the consequences would be embarrassing: ‘[My friend’s mother’s] really lovely, she’s quite cool, I guess . . . I spent most of my childhood round their house . . . you can hardly reject somebody’s mum can you? She added me, so, it would be a bit rude I think, next time I see her ‘‘Oh, you rejected me on Facebook, Matthew’’’ (Matthew). However, the situation with another group of older adults employers raises different issues in relation to privacy. Virtually all respondents spontaneously made reference to employers in the context of their use of Facebook (most had holiday jobs at the time they were interviewed). For some, their employers were Facebook friends, but this could cause tensions. Some students expressed a desire to keep information private from employers and to have restricted access to their profile. Anxiety about the consequences was implicit at times, when a respondent reported having changed her privacy settings as her branch manager was on Facebook: I’ve heard through the grapevine that employers are actually able to look at your Facebook profile to see what kind of person you are, which scares me a lot. Actually I’ve just changed my privacy settings . . . so I don’t have a date of birth or anything. I’ve got like my birthday and that’s about it, that I’m female and that I live in London. (Sophie)

Another student had also added privacy settings to restrict access by work colleagues: ‘I wouldn’t want them reading my wall, some of the stuff on it’ (Matthew). And indeed, for another respondent, one particularly problematic situation had arisen with an employer, which he found acutely embarrassing, as the interviewee had feigned sickness: ‘I basically wanted to go on holiday and they said I couldn’t.’ And ‘because I have got so many different groups of people I have added, there were people from work who are actually on my Facebook, and someone actually posted, ‘‘Oh, so how are you, are you still ‘sick’?’’ in inverted commas’ (Oliver). One interviewee mentioned that Facebook was a private life with her peers: ‘Like a life I’d . . . possibly want to conceal from any professional body or . . . employers, just as like the lines in normal non-e-life are drawn, do you know what I mean?’ (Alice). However, views appeared to vary if the Facebook profile was considered to be benign: ‘In terms of, like, employers or teachers looking at your profile, I still don’t think there is anything really that bad on my profile for them to use’ (Jessica), and ‘There’s nothing on there that’s incriminating in any way’ (Lauren). The latter also commented that she would not want anything on her profile that her parents or ‘anyone’s parents would look at and say, ‘‘Oh dear. Nasty girl’’ that kind of stuff’ (Lauren). Our findings suggest a range of different attitudes towards older adults and particularly parents as Facebook friends. There appears, in some cases, to be a relationship between the nature of the user’s profile and these attitudes, but there are more fundamental issues that relate to these attitudes. Facebook involves making aspects of part of a user’s private life public. There is therefore a constant risk that it may become public in other aspects of the user’s life: Facebook is a very, very public domain people don’t think about it like that. Sometimes I forget, I think it’s just like a telephone or MSN messaging, but it’s really, really public and if you’re not very careful anyone can see whatever. (Charles)

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The idea of Facebook being ‘public property’ was mentioned by one student (Charles). Another, when asked whether he thought that everything that he had on his Facebook profile was ‘essentially public’, responded: ‘Well, it is sort of public . . . but it is not the general public it is like your public, the people that you hang around with’ (Oliver). This suggests a different notion of ‘public’ from that discussed in the literature (e.g. Weintraub 1997), with the notion of public appearing to comprise the individual’s private social world. Discussion This paper set out to examine the extent to which older adults and specifically parents are accepted as Facebook friends, and attitudes towards such friendships and potential friendships. Also of interest were those factors related to privacy that militated against or facilitated having older adults as Facebook friends. For a number of reasons, parents were rarely Facebook friends and there was a clear view that in general they would not be welcomed. There are indications that a less controversial profile might facilitate more positive attitudes towards their inclusion as friends. However, more fundamental issues appear to be at play. This is because Facebook involves making aspects of the individual student’s private life public. The reasons for not wanting older adults, and particularly parents, as friends appeared to be related to embarrassment, social norms, and worries about mothers being exposed and made vulnerable. Underlying these reasons are various notions of privacy. On the basis of our findings, interviewees did not appear to conceive of there being two distinct realms of the public and the private. Facebook was construed by some as part of the public or ‘semi-public’ sphere. Moreover, students in our sample conceptualized privacy in nuanced ways. Self-evidently, there are different groups of ‘friends’, some perhaps closer than others, some related some not, close older adult family members, older adults known socially, and employers. We could perhaps conceptualize these groups as real or perceived ‘delineations’ of an individual’s friends, family members and other contacts. These people share a common relationship to the individual on account of social, geographic, or historical factors with others in their group, but a different relationship to the individual from those people attributed to different groups. As a result, they engage in different behaviours with the individual and are party to different information about the individual. Fahey (1995) has proposed that instead of one public/private boundary, ‘it may be more accurate to speak of a more complex re-structuring in a series of zones of privacy’ (p. 688). Our findings do not necessarily suggest zones of privacy, with the connotations of distance. Rather they suggest a fuzzier understanding of what is private. In short, the user’s private social world is his or her ‘public’, comprising Facebook friends. This interpretation of the public and private is in marked contrast to that proposed in much of the literature, which has tended to focus on adults as citizens, in work, and/or within the family: however, our findings bear similarities to those of Livingstone (2008), who reports on a (younger) user viewing his profile as his own private space, which he wanted to be ‘public’ to friends but ‘private’ to his parents. Our interviewees were students, at a key transition point in their lives (see Molgat 2007). Not yet integrated into the public world of work, they were also no longer as


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dependent as they had been as children on their mothers and fathers and were seeking to distance themselves from them. Importantly, their private lives were not within their family but outside it. Indeed, the broad usage of the notion of private suggests that this may not be the most appropriate conceptualization in all cases. The notion of the ‘personal’ has been proposed (Ribbens McCarthy and Edwards, 2001). This is aimed at drawing ‘attention to experiences that are constituted around a sense of self or identity, to do with emotions, intimacy or the body’ (p. 773). In some cases the notion of the personal was significant for the students we interviewed. Turning to the issue of parents as friends (cf. Williams and Williams 2005), one of the key problems associated with using Facebook relates to mediation. Traditionally, the point of mediation is the individual him or herself who chooses what to reveal about his or her personal life, and what to reveal about his or her family to friends. In real life, when these two parents and friends meet, it can be conjectured that this has been under the mediating influence and most likely watch of the individual in question. Parents being Facebook friends break this distinction. Due to the structure of the site, the parent as a ‘friend’ is free to view what she or he can gather from Facebook of the individual’s personal and social world without the mediation of the individual the parent can look at whatever aspects of the individual’s personal self have been presented on Facebook. The individual’s friends are able to see aspects of the family life between the individual and his or her parents. Also, the parent is free to have contact with the individual’s friends without the mediation of the individual. The user can thus lose control over the separation of these aspects of his or her life, facing an ongoing negotiation between sharing information with his or her friends while keeping information from his or her parents. In conclusion, this study suggests that friendships with parents on Facebook pose particular problems. These are tied in with notions of what is considered private and what is considered public. Our findings indicate that notions of public and private in the context of computer-mediated communication, cannot be considered to be either simple or straightforward. A level of sophistication is apparent, with nuanced understandings of concepts, suggesting that social networking sites such as Facebook are associated with new ways of construing some of the notions surrounding the traditional public/private dichotomy. The notions of what is private and what is public are fuzzy and there is no clear-cut public/private dichotomy. Computer-mediated communication appears to make this fuzziness more apparent than has hitherto been the case. This raises the question as to how this exploratory research might be taken forward. Key issues relate to the extent to which our findings are applicable more generally and to other users of social networking sites. These issues merit investigation using quantitative and qualitative approaches. One particular dimension to address would be the reasons why older adults, particularly mothers and fathers, ‘friend’ or consider ‘friending’ their children, their own understandings of private and public, and how these relate to those of their children.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the students who kindly agreed to give up their time to be interviewed about their use of Facebook. We would also like to thank Jamie West for advice on Facebook.

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Notes 1. For Lange (2007), publicly private behaviour involves the identities of video makers being revealed, while privately public behaviour involves sharing some content with many viewers but limiting access about producers’ identities. 2. Interviewees were asked what they considered their ethnic background to be, but in order to preserve their anonymity these were replaced with the broader categories used in the British census. 3. A characteristic feature of real-life close friends was that a lot of time was spent with the person concerned: ‘Close friends are people I have known for a long time and generally have shared experiences with and general memories, and I have love for them, I guess’ (Oliver) and ‘Someone that I feel comfortable talking to about a fairly wide range of subjects and someone that I see often enough to feel like I have kept in touch with whatever is going on in their life’ (William). 4. The term ‘random’ was used by interviewees with different meanings. A ‘random’ person could be someone that interviewees did not know who got in touch, or someone who was outside their normal social circle.

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