Virtual Worlds Need Caretaking

By SARA KINCAID

The saying goes that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones.

Guest speaker Kevin Prentiss wanted University of Mary students to see their virtual worlds as equally transparent.

“Your bedroom is the center of your physical identity,” he said. “You have a bedroom online … It is a glass bedroom.”

Most of those glass bedrooms are on MySpace or Facebook. More than 90 percent of college-age people have accounts, and about two- thirds access those accounts every day, he said.

Prentiss and other members of Swift Kick, an open content education company, travel to college campuses to talk about more productive ways for students to use social networking sites.

Basically, students need to keep a clean room online. It can still project an image, he said. The Internet, though, has become the first impression. People will do Internet searches on people before meeting them, such as for dates or prospective job applicants.

He showed a photo from a social networking page, name and eyes blacked out, of a Dickinson State University student who is drinking a can of beer while driving and he’s underage. This was a profile photo, which a user can choose. There are other photos, many of which users cannot choose.

Photos are posted onto social networking sites by users, who can name who’s on the photo. Then can do this on a computer, laptop or on a cellphone.

Prentiss took a photo of the group of students in Arno Gustin Hall with his camera phone.

“With two clicks, I e-mail it to Facebook,” he said.

It can be seen by his more than 900 “friends,” people who accepted an invitation to a friendship request on the site. Some people he knows; many he doesn’t. None of the people in the photo had a choice whether he took it or posted it.

That’s the way it goes for some photos that get posted to the Internet. Someone else is taking the picture, usually a friend, and putting it up for the world to see. Students should at least ask them to remove their name from the caption; and if it’s something you don’t want a prospective employer to see, ask them to take it down.

For the online content students can control, Prentiss told the students to keep it positive. Think of it as the online version of the trophy shelf or wall of achievements.

He knows of one college students who used his social networking site to tell his online friends about an award he won. It led to a job, which led to other jobs that he does part-time as he goes to school.

The Internet has potential to reach thousands of people quickly. Prentiss described a high school student’s effort for a national Free Hug Day on Sept. 10 patterned on an effort by an Australian man. The students had 850,000 people respond, and the following day there were videos and comments about what people did.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)

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