Singlestalk: Look who’s stalking

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Michelle (M): I came across an interesting article in an online magazine about stalking exes via Facebook. The writer, a woman, narrated about how through FB, she was able to embark upon a “fact-finding” mission to get details about her ex boyfriend including where he lived, what he did, how he looked, who he had married.

She wrote that over time, her casual curiosity developed into a distracting compulsion that waxed and waned in intensity. Today, to know about anyone or anything all we need is Wi-Fi, and with Facebook, which allows people that we’ve never even met to peruse our photos online, there are many who can do a sort of background check on anyone, including exes.

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Darwin John (DJ): Facebook is already like the default social networking site on earth! It has evolved from a fun distraction to something integral. A research study shows that the amount of time Americans spent on FB increased eightfold from two percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2011! It’s the single most visited site with well over 500 accounts.

Someone once said that if FB is a country, it’s the third largest in the world and by far the least productive. Seriously, I agree that there’s a risk of losing privacy—like being stalked by strangers—but I still think it is doing this planet more good than harm.

M: Have you ever looked up a former love interest online? The writer of the article thinks of her FB-stalking activity as “research”. She wrote that she was surprised to learn that only 40 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 54 fessed up to using Facebook to track their exes, according to a recent Oxygen Media survey of more than 1,600 social-media users.

According to the article, online stalking has been scientifically proven to feel good. It mentioned that researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism hooked 36 students up to sensors and monitored their faces and palms while they navigated Facebook.

By measuring physiological responses associated with motivation and emotion, the researchers found that the students derived the most pleasure from activities described as social searching: “goal-oriented surveillance” that involved visiting another friend’s profile page, reading their Wall posts, perusing their photos, checking out the events they’d recently attended. There’s a word that describes this – cyber-stalk.

DJ: That must be the reason why it’s said that no one looks as ugly as their driver’s license picture nor as pretty as their FB profile picture! But kidding aside, I hardly look at FB in that light. That doesn’t mean I do not care about what I post online. That doesn’t also mean that I do not click on long lost friends’ pages. I do. But I choose to look at FB as a tool to stay in touch with family and friends who I could have easily lost touch due to distance and time. Come to think of it, it’s a challenge to stay connected living in this day and age. People are much more mobile than before. But with FB, I see how my nephews have grown, the sport they engage on, the fun they had while traveling or even get a glimpse of how their lives are turning out even when I am so far away. I can even greet good old friends on their birthdays to let them know that they’re still special even when we’re geographically apart.

M: Social networking has evolved into something that is prone to misuse or abuse. I can understand why some people want to search about their past relationships especially for those who did not have closure. But to spend time and energy to still know what happened to former partners, especially relationships that ended badly, it’s pointless and frankly, disturbing. The article says that Facebook can exacerbate the problem. In the book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, Ilana Gershon interviewed more than 70 people for whom Facebook-stalking of lovers—current, past, and future—was common practice. Yet although her subjects (mostly college students) were open to sharing the creative ways they’d used Facebook to check up on someone else, they were still embarrassed by their need to spy.

DJ: Facebook is not just for people caught between goodbye and I-love-you. Yup, FB can be turn our lives upside down. But it can also bring goodness inside out. Moderation is key. Ultimately, it’s still up to us.