Should Christians live double lives on Facebook?

[James Nored]

 

In the recent book, The Facebook Effect, author David Kirkpatrick interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. One of the issues in the book revolved around privacy and controls over what others could see on one's Facebook page. Here is Zuckerberg's response to this issue:

"You have one identity," he says emphatically three times in a single minute during a 2009 interview. He recalls that in Facebook's early days some argued the service ought to offer adult users both a work profile and a "fun social profile." Zuckerberg was always opposed to that. "The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly."

He makes several arguments. "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity," Zuckerberg says moralistically. But he also makes a case he sees as pragmatic--that "the level of transparency the world has now won't support having two identities for a person."

 

Facebook is an incredible social networking tool--in fact, sometimes too good for many. Potential employers look at people's Facebook pages, often eliminating people for employment consideration based upon things finding Facebook posts with profanity, inappropriate pictures, party lifestyles and the like. Even Facebook users who do not post such things may have friends who post pictures of them, say, living it up at a party. A person might call in sick and go shopping instead, only to have a friend post a picture of them outside of Macy's, "tagging" them.

 

Zuckerberg's point is that rather than worrying about our privacy and what someone else is posting about us, we should live lives that are consistent with who we claim to be, all the time. And this may be a very good thing.

 

Here is an ABC news interview with Zuckerberg.

 

What do you think? Will Facebook help us live more consistent lives?