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the chat room: Real-time discussions with Slate writers.

What Are Friends For?Reihan Salam takes readers' questions about Facebook etiquette and managing your buddies.

Posted Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007, at 1:53 PM ET

Slate contributor Reihan Salam was online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, Sept. 27, to discuss Facebook etiquette and the social-networking phenomenon. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

(Continued from page 1)

Los Angeles: What about relationship status on Facebook? I'm out of college and in my social network you are not considered to be seeing someone until you're "in a relationship" via Facebook. Discuss.

Reihan Salam: That's really interesting! And I'm guessing you're a bit younger than I am. I personally think this is a little silly: what if your boyfriend or girlfriend isn't on Facebook? And what if you'd rather not share your relationship information with the world? Personally, I don't include any information about relationship status, and I of course don't see anything wrong with that.

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Silver Spring, Md.: I belong to an arts organization that just got a MySpace page a few months ago. A couple of times, very strange things have shown up in the Bulletins. One looked like a scam (for gift cards) the other was porn. As one of the site admins I had no choice but to delete the friends. Were these friends real and suffered a hijacking of their identities? I don't know of any approval process we could put potential friends through, other than to click on their own pages. The inability to delete individual bulletin entries is troubling.

Reihan Salam: Oh boy, that is a real problem, particularly on MySpace, and it's a good reason to strongly encourage people to stick to real identities. Facebook is still *mostly* free of this sort of thing (thanks to the yeoman-life efforts at corporate headquarters). Yes, chances are these "friends" are not really friends at all, but vehicles for sleazy, low-rent advertising. This is one of those pervasive perils of the Internet age, I'm afraid. Good for you for being vigilant about it.

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Frederick, Md.: Hello and thank you for taking a question from a clueless parent. I recently learned my 15-year-old has a Facebook (profile? page?). I knew she was on MySpace and have looked at her profile and her friends' pages on MySpace, but I was under the impression that Facebook is for the college-age crowd and older. Should I be concerned?

Reihan Salam: Well, I'm reluctant to give you a simple answer because this is a tough question: the key thing is, how do you feel about your 15-year-old's peer group? Because a Facebook profile is really just a map of a peer group, or should be. I'd talk to your child about it, and maybe stress a few points: don't friend strangers, be very aware of the fact that the information you type in could fall into the wrong hands, even if you apply really strict privacy settings.

Facebook *is* available to high schoolers now and has been for a while now. I do think it is a safer option than MySpace in some ways. The key thing is to use it intelligently and to be aware of the risks. Overall, however, I think Facebook is a fun and even useful tool when used responsibly.

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Tacoma, Wash.: I have two specific issues that you didn't mention in the article and that I think will become increasingly common: I was "friends" with my little sister's boyfriend, but a few weeks ago they had a bad breakup. She dropped her Facebook account entirely, but now I'm still friends with the ex. Any advice? Also, I am a professor, and I have many students on Facebook. One friended me and I said yes. I'm not sure what is appropriate in this case and I'm a little uncomfortable about it. Should I not have done it? Thanks!

Reihan Salam: That's a tough one—and it's a situation that, as you know, often emerges in real life. Here, the question is: do you really need to de-friend this person? Is your little sister asking you to defriend him? That would be a little strong, not to mention intrusive, but that is her prerogative as your sister. If not, well, what's the harm? Or if you really think Facebook should only map your real friends, go ahead and de-friend. I think the stakes aren't really that high in this case.

And I think it is absolutely appropriate for you to accept friend requests from students—but making the request yourself? That probably is a bad idea. I'd avoid it.

That said, don't worry about rejecting these requests—do you really want your students to have access to your profile? Maybe not.

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Washington: Can you explain what you mean by Facebook "owning" information about your friendships? Thanks.

Reihan Salam: A lot of websites let you export information to other websites/services. But say you leave Facebook for Orkut—can you simply port over all of your friendships, wall posts, messages, etc.? Nope.

I don't mean to imply there's anything sinister here, and Facebook has talked about becoming more open. But this is a bit of a side issue.

Check this out if you're interested:

http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/

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Atlanta: I think it's ridiculous to believe that a person who adds you randomly is Facebook-stalking you. I find myself adding people who I think are attractive or have something funny on their page. It's networking—you never know who knows who. I model, at times, so it is nice to see another model with nice photos (maybe she knows a photographer in my area) so I click add as a friend. Rejecting someone seems so snobby. Better to just not click anything and have 103 friend requests pending. However, the hardest part of Facebook, being a member since 2005, is the new applications. There are so many and there are so many requests to join. That can be annoying. Vampires and Pirates and Ghouls, Oh My!