With the emergence of prominent social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, students need to face a reality: adults, and more specifically teachers, are going to have profiles as well. Now, whether or not students choose to ‘friend’ their teachers on Facebook is an entirely different matter. Some students feel that it is completely taboo for a student and a teacher to be friends on Facebook. They should not.

   How often does a student talk to one of his/her 300 Facebook friends in real life? For some friends, the students have never even spoken to each other in real life … and yet, they are still “friends”. So when a teacher friends a student on Facebook, a student will actually talk to them in real life. That is being more of an actual friend than a cyber-friend.  

   While maintaining a profile, teachers will have to keep it professional. However, there are also benefits to teacher-student friendships on Facebook. Students often rely on email to ask a teacher for help on homework; however, a rapid response is not guaranteed.  Teachers who are on Facebook could respond faster. In addition, teacher e-mails run on a server that is often down a couple times per semester. Facebook is a more reliable path of communication outside of school.

   Students could look at a teacher’s photos and gain insight into the teacher’s personal life. However, students also have photos that can be accessed by teachers.  This gives students more motivation to not post indecent pictures of themselves on Facebook. This is important when looking for a job. Employers will give Student A a job over Student B because Student B has pictures of themselves on Facebook while wasted. If teachers could see student’s photos, then students could be more selective about which ones go online. Thus, this helps for more training when students are launched into the real world. 

   Being Facebook friends with a teacher is no different than being Facebook friends with another adult. Students do not lose respect for an adult as an authority figure because they are Facebook friends. If students are to be forbidden from adding teachers as friends, students should also be prevented from adding any adult as a friend.