I’m sitting in my room. It’s a typical Friday night and my friends and I are hanging out, eating snacks and surfing the web. On each of our screens is a variation of the same tabs open. Facebook, twitter, tumblr, some school assignment we have to print out and various fashion blogs.

Our transition from the real world to our internet world is so seamless that it is scary.

Founded in 2004, Facebook was initially a site meant for college students. While the demographic of the site hasn’t changed all that much–it’s still a site used by young adults and teens–it’s purpose and role in our lives has changed quite drastically.

Instead of just being a place to reconnect with people, Facebook has become an extension of our real life selves. Conversations are continued and started, friends are made and lost and people so regularly post every aspect of their lives that Facebook stalking has become an unspoken social norm.

Facebook stalking. The term itself brings a smile of sorts to my face. According to a Google search the term stalking means “to harass someone with unwanted and obsessive attention.” Woah. That’s definitely not what I think I’m doing when I am “Facebook stalking” someone I’ve just met or friended.

Just for kicks, I looked up the term Facebook stalking as well and the first post on the infamous Urban Dictionary (a dictionary for slang words and all) was “a covert method of investigation using facebook.com. Good for discovering a wealth of information about people you don’t actually know.”

And there was even an example of a conversation between two people about the term:

“Person 1: Did you go to the __________ party last night?
Person 2: No, but I was routinely Facebook stalking (insert name of person you have never actually spoken to here)’s photos and saw pictures from it.”

I have to admit that after reading this I laughed a bit and showed my friends.

The reason why I’m talking about Facebook stalking is to bring attention to the larger issue of how much Facebook has changed our offline interactions. I can’t explain how awkward it is when you find yourself having personal information about a person that you shouldn’t have.
For example, a friend of mine had been perusing her college class of 2016 Facebook when she and her friend saw a picture of a cute guy. Her friend had joked about how they would get together in the future. At a later date at a college meetup, my friend met the guy. They began talking and initiated a friendship. Later in the summer, at a send off she saw the guy again. By this point she had told her dad about him (note: her father and the boy have never met). When the dad saw him, he recognized him as the guy from Facebook and said to him “Hey, you’re (insert dude’s name) right.”

While this funny is funny to think about now, this story is not special. Almost everyone I know has had some sort of awkward encounter happen with a stranger because of information found out through Facebook stalking.

For me, this is frustrating and confusing. Why do we put our lives online only to be weirded out when our “friends” find out about it and bring it to light? It makes no sense and reveals how uncomfortable we are as a society with the idea of having everything known.

P.S. here is an interesting article about Facebook and stalking: http://jezebel.com/5945963/facebook-increasingly-determined-to-ruin-the-only-fun-thing-about-facebook-stalking