The Social Media Game.

This is a post that has been on my mind for a while now.  It's one of those issues that came up a couple of weeks ago and I thought 'hey, that might make an interesting blog post'. But then I was back and forth. Should I post about it? Should I not post about it? Should I? Shouldn't I? I've finally come to the decision that yes, I should post about it because I feel like it's an issue that everyone deals with at some point or another.  

Here's the issue:

                              Friend? 

                              Foe?

Or both?

At work a couple weeks ago I got on the topic with a couple of coworkers. One of them is a middle aged woman with a college aged daughter who uses Facebook.  The other is one of my friends who is totally against Facebook. She's kinda the type that uses the Internet to order something online or look something up on google and that's it.  Which is fine.

So we're talking about Facebook and sharing our different opinions on it and my coworker said that her daughter would never do anything inappropriate on Facebook because the 'last thing you want is to get caught in a picture with the red solo cup in your hand'.  And it got me thinking.

I started using Facebook when I was 19.  At the time it was only for college kids - remember those good old days? 

Did I put stupid, drunken pictures of myself up? Yes.

 Did I think twice before I did it? No.

 I WAS IN COLLEGE!!!!!

 I was young and stupid and carefree.  And is that really so bad? That I had fun in college?

Sure, it would look bad if I was posting that stuff now but if I saw a college kid posting stuff like that I certainly wouldn't judge them badly.  I would think 'hey, there's a typical college kid.' You know?

Of course, I've since taken those pictures of myself down.  I'm a teacher so it's pretty important that I don't have inappropriate things up that my kids could accidentally stumble upon.  But on top of that, I'm kinda past the partying stage.  I'm married and I'm gonna be 30 in a few years.  I'm long past the teenage/early 20's "lets go out and get drunk every weekend" phase.  Actually, I'm not sure I ever really went through that phase.

And it's not like I was posting pictures of me doing hardcore drugs or anything.  So I played some beer pong? And yes, I guarantee that I was holding a red solo cup in those photos. But I really don't see that as being such an awful offense. Maybe I'm wrong.

So tell me what you guys think. Is it ok to be a young, careless Facebook user? Or should we all be presenting ourselves through social media like we're perfect little angels?