When I started this endeavor back in early April, I was working to decide between three social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. After a short exploration, I decided that I was undecided and make the choice to keep all three and try them out. How hard could that be, right? With Twitter, I started following classmates and my professor. He, of course, was the most interesting person to follow. I felt limited by the number of characters that I was allowed per message. I would just put up what I was doing at that moment, but I didn’t feel like I was contributing much. So I eventually let my postings fade on that account. About the same time as my original Twitter membership, I spread the word among my students that I was putting up a SNS site. It took about two days before the first student found me. She was a very active MySpace member, with over 400 friends, her own blog posts, music in the background, the works. She had tons of photos on her page, and she made it really interesting to visit her page. She was the inspiration for me dressing up my site. Her name was Rachel. When the bad news happened in our community with the two young men drowning, Rachel was were I found out first. Rachel is still one of my top friends.

I also set up a Facebook account because I had heard that high school students liked Myspace and college students liked Facebook, and I wanted to build a big network of people I knew. One of my seniors was my first Facebook friend, and having her on my account led to others who had graduated already to come and find me. I have been able to keep up with students near and far. So which site has had the most significant impact on me? For numbers, Myspace friends outnumber Facebook friends 2 to 1. For interactive applications that are quirky, fun, and sometimes eye opening entertainment (the Testimonials), it is definitely Facebook. Also with Facebook, I like the Wall, the pokes and hugs and roses, and the notification updates on when friends are added.

So how has having a social networking account changed my life? It has really given me a good feeling about myself being on these sites.  Even though I only have a total of 90 friends to date, it has been a good experience for me to come home and get messages from my students about their days.  They are not allowed to show me pictures at school, so they post them on their sites (like prom pictures or family pictures) and I can see them there.  Sometimes they ask me questions that they are afraid to ask in class, and I can answer them in privacy.  I feel more effective because I am a better communicator with them.  I still have many kids who do not use SNS, but I get a new group of students next year, and I will encourage them to communicate with me and with each other.

So when I asked my students why they have social networking sites, they overwhelming response was that they use it to keep in touch with friends and family that they don’t get to see socially very often.  One student keeps in touch with members from an out-of-state church camp he attends every summer in Arkansas.  When I surveyed the students who do not have social networking sites, their reasons for not having one were it took too much time and that instant messaging was easier, several people did not like interacting with someone that they could not see, and some found the sites boring.