Who are Your Friends on Facebook?

Cross posted by Lisa Thumann at ThumannResources.com

I don't know about you, but I have gotten a recent flood of friend requests on Facebook. Most of them are not from family members or from folks that I truly know well. They are from "Mutual Friends". You know what I'm talking about. You look at the number listed to the right of their request to see how many mutual friends you have and that helps you decide whether to accept them or not. Right?

When I first started using Facebook back in 2008 I thought I would use it to keep in touch with family and close friends and possibly even those folks that I had met at conferences and edtech events. But that has now grown and I find myself looking at status updates from people I don't know at all. What happened?

The other day I logged in to update my status and check out what my FB friends were up to when I got an IM (instant message) from someone I really didn't know.

"Hello?"

I didn't respond.

"when u will reply me? never?"

I know what we teach our students and our children about not replying to people that we don't know, but I was ALREADY friends with this person. Something had convinced me to accept his friend request. When I clicked on his profile I saw only 4 common friends and the face of someone I had never met in person. I also saw that his status updates were not in English. Why was I FB friends with him?

"sometimes i see u
try to talk to u
but u never replied me
i really wonder why?
just a human i m too
not a monster"

What would you do at this point?

I was so frustrated with myself because if I didn't want to IM with this person, I should have never accepted his friend request, yet I felt a sense of guilt for not replying.

"i think i saw u
from nice place for example
about education
about projects
i m a teacher and an engineer
and a coordinator of projects"

Feeling guilty and curious, I asked what he wanted to chat about.

"i thought
i would talk
or share somehting
but as i see u dont care
if i disturbed u
i m really sorry"

I replied that he was not disturbing me, but that I had to log off and go walk my dog. (This was true as my dog had been barking for a few minutes and obviously needed to go out.)