i started to respond to a post by BG , but my comment was getting to long so Ill finish it here. THis is what i responded to his post:

i never considered this. Yeah, i do text my friends to see what they are up to. And I'm guilty of checking my friends’ pictures out on facebook. But i never considered these actions to be a form of monitoring or surveilling (if that's a word) of my friends. I usually regard monitoring negatively; something that's a hassle or intrusive. With that said I'd hate to think I spy on my friends... but do i? Have i become so immune to a facebook lifestyle that i don't even stop to think what exactly it is I'm doing each time i login to my account? I am going to continue blogging about this on my blog.

and I am going to continue it...

...Now that I stop and think about it, clearly i am monitoring my friends, but in this case i don't consider monitoring in a negative way. I text my friends when i want to see where they are so we can go get lunch or something. When I am on facebook I usually look up friends, write on some walls and that's about that. I do look at pictures but they usually are ones that belong to my friends not attending hws. I do this as a way to just see what they are up to i guess. And some people might consider that spy like behavior and i see where they are coming from. But in my defense, my friends know I look at their pictures, just as I know they look at mine. I look because i'm curious, not because i am a creeper. I don't look through 200 pictures of all of my friends, i just look at the first couple. It’s funny as i sit here typing this I feel like i have to justify what i do on facebook; prove that i am not a creeper. Facebook allows us the ability / power to creep (or spy) on our friends...it definitely publicizes our information.

How we choose to use this power is up to us. As i said before, I use facebook as a way to check up on some of my friends that don't go to hws and i do this because they are my friends and I care about them. I talk to them on the phone as well. I use facebook and my cell phone as a way to maintain communication with some of my friends that don't go to hws. Both of these technologies help to simplify this process of maintaining long distance friendships. Furthermore, these two technologies allow me the ability to stay up to date with my friends and their lives. I choose to keep up to date with certain friends because they are my friends and i care about them. If i didn't care, I wouldn’t bother, but I do care, so I will bother. With that said, if keeping up to date with certain friends, means i am actually "monitoring" them, then I guess I am guilty of that. But I don’t think I’m the only one…

-adrienne