9: Your Friendly Neighborhood Facebook Stalker

"Facebook stalking" is the phenomenon associated with viewing a component of a person's profile on Facebook of which you are not a part of. Facebook stalking can be divided into two categories: FFS (fun friendly stalking) or GCS (genuinely creepy stalking). FFS occurs when you are either: a) looking at the profile of someone you are Facebook friends with or semi-aquaintances in real life at the very least (i.e. you don't pretend to ignore them when you run into them on Ho Plaza) or b) Not Facebook friends but friends in real life and have been too lazy/forgetful to friend them (yet you never forget to look at their profile from time to time, somehow). During FFS stalking, you can view your friend/acquaintance's pictures from their vacation, their sorority/fraternity/sports team mixer (if you are not in the same organization), or of their family ( but it is only FFS if you and the person are considered friends in reality!). It is not considered to be stalking if you are anywhere in the album. FFS can also happen when your Facebook friend (or at least semi-acquaintance as defined above) updates their profile information and you would like to see what their new favorite saying of the week is, or what they're newly listening to in their iPod. While viewing their walls, it is only considered FFS if the person is an acquaintance (on a more personal level than semi-acquaintance, an acquaintance is defined as someone you would have a 1-2 minute conversation with when bumping into them on Ho Plaza). The level at which you look more into depth at their profile should correspond to how good friends you are in real life.

Any Facebook activity that does not meet this criteria is defined as GCS (genuinely creepy stalking). A good indicator of whether or not you are engaging in GCS is to ask yourself, "What if I'm in the library looking at profile of said person, and he/she is in the row behind me watching me look at their profile?" If their imagined reaction involves not getting sketched/creeped out/nervous/vulnerable/concerned, then you are most likely engaging in FFS. Any part or combination of this reaction indicates you are hardcore GCS. In and among GCS, there are various level of severity. For instance, if the person is Facebook friends with you from Orientation week freshman year and you haven't spoken to them since, this is less severe GCS than stalking that guy/girl sitting at the table behind from you in Trillium last Wednesday who you heard talking about The Office. You love anyone who loves The Office and want to get to know him/her better...creepy!

However, I do recognize that mostly everyone on Facebook including myself engages in GCS from time to time. For example, I found that many people in Israel are just recently discovering Facebook and have been signing up for it in large numbers. Since I went to elementary school and Middle School in Israel, I was interested in checking out my old classmates, but I've been too shy to friend them yet in fear that they don't remember who I am. GCS? You bet! The level of severity as well as frequency of GCS may lead to PIU (Problematic Internet Usage) and Facebook is especially conducive to frequent and severe GCS.

PIU or Problematic Internet Usage is the excess use (too much time spent) or impulse use (uncontrolled, with an accompaniment of guilt) of the Internet to the point where it may result in problematic and maladaptive social, academic and professional behavior in the individual.
Facebook provides all too many perfect opportunities for GCS. Although you may not be speaking to that friend of yours on Facebook since who knows when, whenever they update their profile it pops up on your Minifeed or list of updated profiles just the same as when a good friend of yours updates his or her profile. Thus, out of sheer boredom or curiosity, it is just as convenient to look at the profile of a random person you once talked to or your best friend you've known since kindergarten. Facebook's inability to differentiate between degrees of varying friends leads to increased opportunity to GCS, which would increase a potential PIU.

Stalking strangers/people who are not your friend, the main component of GCS, can be greatly enhanced by Facebook. Many people's profiles are visible to other people in their network, providing those that might not be friends with them to stalk them completely without having to go through the trouble of friending them (especially if the one being stalked does not know the stalker). Facebook provides users with the option of blocking their profile to people who are not in their network, however many choose to make their profile visible to all those in their community. The advanced searching tool provides many users to stalk others in their network if they only know limited details about the person whose profile they wish to view such as class year, high school, and screen name. This has helped many of my guy friends, I know, look up the girl they met at a recent party in Cornell when they couldn't remember her full name and only that she was from Albuquerque and a Biology major.

In addition, GCS can be done to a person even if he or she is not in your network or their profile is blocked. Some strategies to overcome this (I may or may not be speaking from experience) is to go through the list of friends of the person being stalked (which is usually the only thing provided along with the person's name, network and a thumbnail of their profile picture). Sooner or later, you may find a friend whose network you may belong to who may be close friends with the person you want to stalk. Through their friend whose network you are in, you may be able to see pictures and wall posts of the person. Again, Facebook gives settings to block the friends list or picture from a blocked profile, but many instead choose to display this information. As Caplan points out, there are both individual factors and property factors that can influence GCS to becoming a PIU. Facebook's features, as mentioned, make it simple to self-disclose and encourages disclosure in order for each individual to maintain a virtual presence of their own.

However, many individual characteristics mentioned in Davis et al. can turn GCS from an occasional curiosity to a disruptive, frequent maladaptive behavior that can interfere with the person's functioning outside of the Internet. Davis et al. found significant predictors in people with problematic Internet use: diminished impulse control, problems with depression/loneliness, use of the Internet as a tool of social comfort, and the use of the Internet for procrastinating and distraction. People who may uncontrollably devote large amounts of time reading about the details of the lives of others on Facebook may be depressed and lonely, since they may feel as if they can live vicariously through the lives of others by exploring that person's life off the Internet through wall posts and pictures. Looking at a person's Facebook profile, especially a person who you don't know very well can lead to many exaggerated impressions (via Hyperpersonal model) that a person can form as a tool for coping with loneliness. Using GCS as a tool of social comfort may also be a factor in why GCS can lead to PIU. Although there is no interaction between parties in GCS, a stalker may derive social comfort from looking at the interactions of others. Using GCS when you are procrastinating or as a tool for distracting is easy, since it engages you in the lives of others you may not know, diverting anxieties over getting that paper done or your own problems to the lives and identities of other people. Those with less impulse control are also less likely to control their impulse to spy, pry and inform themselves with what other people may decide to put on their profiles.

As Caplan's model suggests, those with psychosocial problems (loneliness, depression) are more susceptible to Internet use because they find it less threatening and more reliable in providing an intended result. Some who take GCS too far may be shy and not confident in interacting face-to-face. They see their complete anonymity behind the computer as non-threatening since Facebook makes it a policy to never disclose who views one's profile and how many times it is viewed. In principle GCS is usually effective in learning about a person without ever having to interact. People with psychosocial problems tend to experience anxiety over or avoid face-to-face interaction. Since they prefer the Internet, GCS may be replaced by interacting with people in reality, and consequently addiction to the Internet may result. Lack of interaction and increased anonymous observation though the Internet may further worsen the psychosocial problems the individual experiences. In addition, GCS in large compulsive amounts is not seen as socially acceptable. Those who let this kind of Facebook stalking get in the way of their social lives by interacting less, and straining their academic lives by using time to stalk instead of study, are not generally well regarded in society. Addiction to the Internet due to features of the Internet and features of the individual is a positive feedback mechanism whose factors feed into each other, making the situation worse.