When I was growing up, I was taught that eavesdropping was wrong. Many years later, when I went to law school, I was taught that anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. In business school I learned how important it is to protect a company’s (and a person’s) good name.

Maybe that is why I am still uncomfortable with Facebook (as much as I like it).

After years of requests from friends and relatives, as well as personal and professional curiosity, I finally signed up for Facebook and joined the social networking phenomenon. In my opinion, Facebook is amazing—truly a wonder to behold. It’s a one stop place to communicate with your friends, keep up with relatives, express yourself, support causes that you love, exchange photos and messages, build your own personal global community, and much more. Facebook is not just a social networking site, it is a revolution. It is fun, interesting, and exciting—a world of endless discoveries, thrilling reunions and reconciliations, captivating experiences, and unlimited self-expression.  

Yet, from what I have seen, it is also a place where smart people forget about normal, healthy boundaries. Out of a desire to describe their personality and express their uniqueness to their dear friends, people reveal all kinds of things about themselves to their vast and growing list of Facebook “friends,” most of which are not in that inner circle of truly close friends. Facebook does not let you distinguish between levels of friends (e.g., intimate friends verses distant friends), and I can tell you from experience that it is very hard to turn down “friend requests” from a stranger when that stranger and I share a mutual friend who has recommended me.  

In the old days, we were taught that personal privacy was something to be guarded and cherished. We were taught that “Big Brother” looking over our shoulder was a bad thing. You literally would have had to hire a private investigator to discover what is now freely revealed by people online. It’s almost as if everyone is “undressing.” 

But this isn’t the beach. 

Even if a person is immensely careful about what he or she says on Facebook, he or she can’t control what friends say or do or post, and how that might reflect back on the person. The digital world has not changed the fact that who we associate with does say something about us. Do people really understand the implications of posting so much “behind-the-scenes” information?

I can’t help but wonder how many people will not get the jobs they wanted, the publishing deals they sought, the favorable references they needed, or the unswerving loyalty they expected, because of what they exposed about themselves on social networking sites. 

In this brave new digital world, how do we teach young people not just internet safety, but wisdom and discretion?

Proverbs 17:28 says, “Even a fool is thought to be wise if he holds silent.”