I am always finding articles in Cosmo Girl about social networks or forms of CMC that take me right back to subjects we discussed in electronic communications. We talk about the reason for why people have so many friends on Facebook and are these people really who they say they are? Why do people just accept friend requests from anyone even if they are not a friend or a friend of a friend? I just presented an article I read, to the class that suggested maybe people like to see their friend list grow to outrageous proportions and see how many friends they can get. Even if this is true what if there was someone in the list of 200 friends that shouldn't be or that you already accepted their request but no longer want them as a friend?

The article I came across in Cosmo Girl is called "De-Friending Done Right." First there is the total stranger. Either do not accept the friend request or if that's already happened and you want to de-friend him/her just go ahead and do so and hope they don't sent a message. In the even that they do just Cosmo Girl says you can send them a message back explaining its nothing personal but I think that it is unlikely for people to do that. Also there are ways to protect your information. If you have a friend who is not really a well known friend, change the privacy settings. This is a way to limit what that friend can view. I think this is also good because I know of situations where people have not been hired for jobs because of things they had on their page. If you limit what others can view then it should not become a problem if you happen to friend a potential employer.

Also the article just gives specific ways to handle situations through messaging. Just telling a person in a nice, rational way why they can not be their friend or why they keep that friendship at a certain level. I agree with not friending just anyone however I know that I tend to. In class we are trying to figure out many of reasons why people use the social networks in they way they do. I do think for some people just seeing how many friends they can have is something that keeps them going back for more. Having an extraordinary amount of people on a friend list may make people feel popular, however how many of those people are actually their true friends and someone they want to talk to. I just suggest, after all the things we have discussed in class about negative CMC, and people pretending to be someone they are not, if someone wants to friend just anyone then they should select their privacy settings carefully.