NATIONAL NEWS — With its status as the sixth most visited
Web site in the
States
Facebook has become one of the most widely used networking sites on the
Internet.
But in addition to connecting users from colleges across the
country, allowing friends to share messages, photos and videos and enabling
students to compare movie and music tastes with the click of a mouse, this
popular social tool has also become a Petri dish for research scientists across
the nation. This means that any current Facebook users who haven’t activated
certain privacy options could easily find themselves under the scrutiny of a
researcher’s microscope.
Psychologists, political scientists and sociologists from
universities nationwide, including Harvard and UCLA, have been eagerly testing
traditional theories in relationships, identity, self-esteem, popularity, race
and political engagement using Facebook — taking advantage of the candidly
honest and unprotected profiles of thousands of students.
In a recent issue of the New York Times, Nicholas
Christakis, a Harvard professor currently using Facebook to research social
relationships, hailed the use of the popular social networking tool in studies.
Though professors may be excited about their newfound
ability to pry into students’ online profiles, many of their subjects haven’t
been as equally thrilled. Moreover, if it weren’t for certain students’ neglect
to adjust their privacy settings in the first place, many professors still
would not have access to that information today.
With the exception of a few schools like Indiana University,
which has strict policies barring academic research without the permission of
students, many Facebook users who are under analysis have absolutely no idea
that their profiles are being studied. But, according to Facebook’s terms of
use, this is completely permissible. Currently, there is no policy prohibiting
scholars — or virtually any person for that matter — from studying the profiles
of users who haven’t activated the necessary privacy settings.
Predictably, using students’ thought-to-be personal
information as public data strikes many students as disreputable, especially
considering that in many cases, these students are not even informed that their
information is being used in the first place.
Not every student has the common sense to keep their
personal information off the Internet, but this doesn’t mean they are willing
to participate in experimental studies of which they have no prior knowledge.
“Conducting research without the user’s consent is
unethical,” said D.M. Hallowell, who
holds a master’s degree in higher education from and updates his fellow scholars in his
journal “Educational Theory and Pedagogy,” concerning educational theory.
“[Terms of security] agreements have nothing to do with it.”
Besides the issue of collecting information without a user’s
consent, researchers are also at fault for using information that was not
intended to be employed for investigative purposes to begin with.
“People who participate in Facebook do so for social [and]
personal reasons,” Hallowell said. “There is no intent that their information
will be used in any other way.”
Since many students don’t realize they are signing up to be
research subjects by neglecting to privatize their profiles, more schools
should follow Indiana University’s example and enforce stricter policies for
academic researchers. Without consent from students, universities should not
allow researchers to use students’ profiles for their studies.
Although others may argue that once information is available
on the Internet, it becomes fair game for anyone to use, this is not a worthy
standard for researchers. Simply because a student has an online account does
not imply that their information can be used for purposes of investigation.
If privacy and ethical issues aren’t big enough deterrents
for Facebook-based research, scientists shoulc also consider the skewed data
that online profiles provide. Because it is a social tool, students often
aren’t completely sincere in their profiles. Inside jokes, embellishments and
fake marriages are just a few of the phony statistics that researchers would be
incorporating into their studies if they were to treat typical Facebook
falsehoods as facts.
Unlike traditional data collection, online social profiles
are being studied without users’ consent and are employed for purposes other
than those that their users intended. It is far more acceptable for researchers
to continue with traditional means of gathering information, rather than prying
into college students’ online social networking tools where their statistical
scrutiny is unwelcome.
Professors and researchers should stick with paid surveys
and case studies when it comes to social science — just because Facebook is an
easily accessible pool of data doesn’t mean that unwitting student users should
be exploited for experimental purposes.
