Enduring Endship

The New York Times describes how "To Deal With Obsession, Some Defriend Facebook" to explain the reluctance of some young people to devote their time to the popular social network site. But Internet researchers are also describing another pattern that might be of more concern to this large player in the Web 2.0 marketplace, which now seems to be changing privacy defaults and promoting the Bing search engine during normal navigational behavior in ways that are annoying longterm users. More than simple time-management and attention discipline may be involved when a young person lets an account go inactive. Some kids have opened other accounts under coded names to avoid parental friendships that come with surveillance. Still others are migrating to other venues now that Facebook is being seen as going mainstream.