I am a big fan of social networking. Huge. Some might call me an addict. Facebook. Twitter. The internet in general. You don’t spend your time blogging, tweeting, and updating all day if you’re not a fan of the internet. But even I have to admit that sometimes being a product of the Facebook generation has its faults.

Just look at what happened to Natalie Munroe, the Central Bucks High School English teacher, who was suspended after posting degrading comments about her students on a personal blog. And now, she’s all over the internet, and not in a good way. Munroe posted the comments over a year ago, but the blog was recently discovered when someone posted it on a Facebook page and eventually one of the parents turned it into the school.

Munroe claims that she never imagined that anyone would actually read what she wrote. But they did. And now she’s one of the biggest stories of the week. The blog has since been taken down. But the quotes and comments still live on. And that’s the most important part to remember, I think, for our generation, at least.

We’re a generation of oversharers (and if you think you’re not, think again). We lack boundaries. People post about everything from their bathroom habits to their sexcapades without giving it a second thought. But what happens when someone reads that comment about your horrible boss and shows it to said horrible boss? Or when you tell your friend you’re home sick and then post pictures of yourself with your boyfriend two hours later? How many times do you update your Facebook a day? Probably more than you realize. We do it without even thinking about it. Everything that happens has to be shared. It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what we do. But now we need to think about how what we do on the internet will affect what we do in real life.

Last year, a recent college grad took the day off from work and told his boss he had a funeral to attend. (I’d link you but Gawker seems to have misplaced their search function.) But later that day he posted pictures of himself at a party. His boss found out, and naturally he was fired. And yes, he shouldn’t have lied to begin with, but had he thought enough not to post the pictures on the internet, he might have been able to avoid losing his job over playing hooky like we’ve all done at least once.

The number of people you have the capability to Facebook stalk? That’s the amount of people that have the capabilities to Facebook stalk you. Even though we post for people to read, we sometimes forget that people read what we post. And not just during that second that we post, but for weeks, months, and years after. What gets posted on the internet stays on the internet. Especially when it isn’t locked. If you have a public blog, you have a public blog, and anyone can read it whenever they want to. And they will read it; both the people you’re sharing it with and the people you never even thought about.

And that’s something that our generation has to learn to recognize as we move forward, out of college and into the workforce.  Social networking is a great tool, and we’re lucky to have been born into a world on the brink of this technology. But our generation as a whole needs to find a way to use these tools to our advantage without ending up in the same situation as Natalie Munroe. Can we curb our virtual word vomit? Lock our tweets? Cut our Facebook friends? Fight the urge to share everything with everyone? And stop blogging about things that can get us fired?

Let’s start a blog post and discuss…

Is it true though? Or are the tabloids just running exaggerated fantasies to harpoon mass appeal? It’s hard to know because these grandiose lifestyles are perpetuated by the attention drawn to them (unless the celebrity is actually talented). Case in point — the Kardashian sex tape.

Bad publicity is good publicity, I suppose… especially for the venues that become associated with celebrity attendance (who doesn’t want to go to places where you might see a rockstar in a bar fight or catch Paris Hilton stripping down to… well… a slightly more naked version of her usual self?).

When talking about club publicity, nothing turns up the temp on a particular venue more than the drug habits of the celebrities. The scandalous behaviors of one Miss Britney Spears has made headlines for a variety of clubs in New York including an all time personal favorite, Marquee. Yes, she has been caught using drugs in the public bathrooms all around town and she’s not the only one. The question then becomes, of course, how many drugs are being done in these places? Certainly you run a high risk (pun intended) of being caught abusing drugs if you are a celebrity, but what about us ordinary folk? Are drugs swimming through the clubs as the tabloids would have us believe?

The answer is YES. I would never consider myself a drug abuser, but I know first hand that almost every club I have been to has it’s own underground microcosmic drug scene. Club Stereo was closed last year after several cocaine busts, though this came as no shock as Stereo was known for being “pot friendly” and leaving the club was like opening the Scoobie Doo van (smoke pouring out). Tenjune turns the other cheek when it comes to smoking the reefer in the VIP section and won’t ask why there are so many girls leaving the bathroom with runny noses. The real shocker comes from Le Souk where I witnessed some special k being snorted in the wide open.

I have also witnessed people getting arrested. Again, Club Stereo, you win in this department with flying colors. On two — no three occasions I witnessed drug raids there, but in the end, drug use was far far more frequent than the arrests that were made. This can probably be said true for almost any club and can be said especially true for celebrities. Amongst my celebrity encounters few involved sobriety (or much respect for, I dunno… THE LAW). Indeed, the Studio 54 mentality lives on in places like Bungalow 8 (where you might just order “a rum and coke.. hold the rum”).

These scenes are often under the radar of the public because of tight security. It’s nearly impossible to get in unless you know someone, ARE a celebrity or (at the very least) have your very own assistant. Places rarely have to answer to the law because undercover cops simply do not fit the demographic of these super-dooper (more like super-doper) high-end venues.

This doesn’t mean that the celebrity lives we read about aren’t embellished to perfection, but it certainly adds validity to the stories. The truth of the matter is, we aren’t living lives so separate from those we read about and if anything can be learned from the tabloids, it’s two things: 1) where the drugs are 2) where people get caught doing them.

The results surprised scientists, who had previously believed that happiness was stable when looking at societies over time. Bucking the conventional knowledge, happiness levels in forty countries “rose substantially.”

Denmark is the happiest nation, Zimbabwe the least, and the US was rated as the 16th happiest country. A similar survey released last week determined one reason America isn’t ranking higher on the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations.

Is this true? Is our generation happier than our parents’ generation? Its probably true that our lives are busier as a result of being constantly connected through e-mail, blackberries, cell phones and social networks. I’ve often wondered if this adds or detracts from our general happiness — constant connectivity can be both a blessing and a curse.

As women, we certainly are afforded a collection of freedoms our mothers were denied. Our generation has seen increased educational and career opportunities, lessened social stigma of being single or a single mom and a rise in financial and social freedoms, just to name a few.

By my age, my mom was married with two babies and a mortgage. How times have changed! I’d like to think that my happiness level is higher than it would have been if I grew up in the sixties or seventies. True, I would have loved to hit up Woodstock or rocked a cute peace-sign studded shift dress, but these days I have a world of freedoms and options, unavailable to females my age just a few decades ago.

Whether its extensive travel or making our education or career the focus of our universe, we are truly able to choose our own adventure and need not be tied down to a hubby and rugrats so early in our lives. But does this make us happier? Or were women happier in simple times, when tradition and stability reigned?

I’m not quite sure where the modern, kick-ass, twenty-something female rates on the happiness scale. Some, like the author of What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us, would say our ambition and heightened goals have only lead to more unhappiness, confusion and insecurity. Others would say we are over-stressed, over-worked and overly obsessed with material things, body image and success compared to the Baby Boomer Generation. But I think us girls are doing just fine — we’re more socially conscious, more self-aware, more worldly and more open minded than our gray-haired counterparts. And so, somewhat tentatively, I do believe that we, the free and fearless females of our progressive generation, are happier than past generations.

What do you think?

ScienceDaily reports that “fines of nearly $200 are being doled out to students deemed to be guilty of ‘trashing’ fellow students — a practice that involves covering a comrade in champagne, confetti, flour, raw meat, octopus and other foodstuffs.”

These fines are in relation to the students celebrating the end of exams. Okay, come on, if they are students at Oxford and made it through another year of school there, I say they have reason to celebrate!

All joking aside, it is disturbing that University officials are using this website to incriminate the students. Although it is on an internet site for all to see, it sort of seems like a breach of privacy, right?

Moral of the story: untag ANY incriminating photos of yourself for a multitude of reasons.

As Facebook gradually became bigger, more complicated, more cluttered, and more creepy, we complained, but after the initial outcry, we always acquiesced and eventually embraced the new developments. Newsfeed threatened to tear us apart, but as always, we broke down and accepted it. And then came the greatest betrayal, when Facebook opened its once closely guarded gates and welcomed in anyone, anyone at all.

If anything could drive me away from Facebook forever, it would be the über-sketch appearance of members with the words “(no network)” appearing ominously after their names. And yet, we tolerate even this.

Somehow, the latest Facebook phenomenon still managed to take me by surprise. I’m referring, of course, to the applications. After years of slowly but surely adopting one gimmicky, gratuitous feature after another, Facebook decides to let us create our own, and in doing so, flood profiles with clutter. Well I hate it.

Some of the applications don’t suck. I appreciate that. According to the nifty sidebar on the application directory, iLike is a popular application among my friends. Add songs and music to your profile, and see who’s going to concerts. Okay. Sounds pretty good, I guess. But that’s so MySpace. And worse, it doesn’t match. All the applications have different designs, different colors, different logos. And for someone so OCD she absolutely cannot wear her Gap bra with Victoria’s Secret underwear, a Facebook profile cluttered with random mismatched crap is just intolerable. Graffiti? Superpoke? Top Friends? Hot or Not? Gross! Everything is messy and weird and full of bugs, and I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.

If I wanted to use MySpace, I’d be using MySpace. I mean seriously, what’s next? The day they give me the option to make my Facebook profile sparkly flashing purple…well, I want to say that’s the day I finally deactivate my account, but we all know I’ll be back. I always go back…

And sure, there are days when I question the validity of such sites. In the beginning of the Facebook craze, I was totally against it. What the hell do I want an online profile for? I thought in the beginning. What do you do, just stare at people at all day? Initially, I thought it was a completely stupid idea.

Somewhere along the line my thoughts changed, and I became one of the millions who gladly post pictures and contact information for all to see. Isn’t this what our parents warned us about when we started signing on in the 1990’s?

“Don’t you dare put any personal information up on the internet, young lady!” My mom would warn as our modern screamed and coughed and finally signed me on with a computerized You’ve Got Mail! “There are crazy people all over the place.”

I listened to her then, still awed and scared by this new internet superhighway. But as the internet became as familiar and daily as brushing my teeth, something must have changed. I must have decided those scary crazy people weren’t so scary. I must have decided that hitting my Twenties stopped all those creepy child predators from wanting to track me down. I must have decided something.

I just can’t remember what it was.

Not everyone subscribes to the Facebook way of life, and the more I hear about companies checking the drunk birthday pics of their employees and registered sex offenders still finding ways to lure children over Myspace, the more I think about taking a break. How many hours would I gain a day? Two? Three? I don’t even want to do the math, but I’m sure it’s a lot. Someone could probably find a cure for cancer in the amount of pointless hours I’ve spent on both those sites.

And what about those 206 friends I supposedly have? Do any of them come over to hang out? Call me? No. They leave random, noncommittal messages—probably just to see their name on someone else’s profile. Half of these people I don’t even know that well, we’re just “friends” in an attempt to seem popular to…whoever cares.

You know what? I’m taking my mom’s advice and erasing any kind of personal information from my accounts. Oh, and those pictures of me where my eyes are half-closed and I’m dancing with someone’s blow-up doll? Gone forever.

…It’s probably for the best. Wouldn’t want all those weirdo stalkers who have found me through personal tidbits getting the wrong idea.

At first, I was anti-facebook and refused to put a picture up and only opened an account so that I could see what all the broohaha was about. After a few months, I looked like the creepy one with only a question mark to represent me. So, I gave in and posted my first facebook picture.

In my mind, the aspect that made facebook legitimate at first was the fact that it ONLY for college students. Somehow that justified it to me and seemed to minimize the amount of creepy old men posing as fourteen-year-olds that could be on it.

But now, The New York Times reports that Facebook is heading towards a future more similar to that of Myspace, and that sucks.

“Some of the new features, demonstrated by software developers at a Facebook event, will allow members to recommend and listen to music, insert Amazon book reviews onto their pages, play games and join charity drives, all without leaving the site.

The result is expected to be a proliferation of new tools and activities for Facebook’s 24 million active users, who have largely been limited to making online connections, sharing photos and planning events.”

Okay, cool, more features for us to use and play with while procrastinating real work. Sounds good, right?

Wellll, not so fast. With these new features comes consequences…”The move could foster some of the chaotic creativity that is more closely associated with MySpace, its larger competitor. It could also open the door to hazards like spam, and make Facebook’s identity less clear.”

Okay, not so cool, more spam and more like myspace. I definitely agree that Facebook is losing it’s identity as well. It used to be a college social networking site, and that was fabulous. But now, it is opening its doors to too much extra crap and going further from its original mission. Tear.

I say, bring back the old facebook! Here here!