Facebook and Sunday School

This week in Sunday School we were talking about the tendency we sometimes have to compartmentalize our lives.  We behave one way at Church, a little differently when we are at work, and still differently when we are hanging around with friends.  We may say we have to be mean and tough at work to get the job done.  We may say we have to tell the rude jokes when we are with friends so we can fit in.

The conversation followed the expected path for a few minutes with comments such as these.  “We should live with integrity and be faithful witnesses wherever we are.”  “If we behave one way at church and differently in the community we provide fuel to the naysayers who claim the Church is just a bunch of hypocrites.”

Then someone said “On Facebook you have to be the same to everyone, you don’t get to pretend to be one way with one group and another way with another group.  They are all just friends.”

I think there is some truth to that.  Especially if you have not customized your privacy settings.  The privacy settings will let you control what friends and friends of friends can see.  It will even let you set up groups of friends such as “church friends” and “work friends” and have different settings for each group.  However, I doubt this is common practice for most casual Facebook users.

I thought about this issue when I setup my page and wondered if I should have a profile for work and a profile for church.  I quickly decided that was way too much trouble.  I don’t even want to take the time to set up different groups of friends.  I then thought I would use linkedin for work related social networking.  That too became too much trouble.  I settled on letting Facebook be the only social networking site that I regularly update and check.

Some of my work friends may not care about what I’m doing at church, and vice versa, but it is all part of who I am.  I do try to always remember my first rule of social networking.  “Never post anything anywhere on line that you don’t want EVERYONE to see.”

By the way, Facebook is changing its privacy policies and settings to make it easier to share your information with everyone.  Be sure you know what you are doing before you check the new box that says “Share with Everyone.”