Facebook is a phenomenon and opportunity that presents questions and challenges for therapists as well as an interesting cyber terrain to explore. Its most compelling feature is the size of the network. There are over 600,000,000 users and it continues to grow. Facebook has expanded its purpose from a social network to a network where businesses can promote themselves.

Imagine having an interactive billboard that markets your services in cyberspace at minimal cost.  The possibilities are tantalizing and yet problematic, and still alluring.

The evolution of Web 2.0, where the Internet has become an extended multipurpose rich media social/business network is a phenomenon whose effects need to be understood.  Some assert that the Internet is changing the boundaries between private and personal, professional and personal. The “online disinhibition effect,” http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html the tendency for people to behave more uninhibitedly online than in real world situations is suggestive of this change.

Yet studies of FB and Internet use suggest that change might be more superficial than substantive.  To paraphrase Jaron Lanier, http://www.jaronlanier.com/ virtual reality pioneer and media and technology critic, technology changes, but people don’t.  A survey of FB and Internet use conducted at the University of Texas found the overwhelming use of FB was social.  Individuals tended to use FB to share information and pictures with family and friends.  From this perspective, the Internet provides opportunities for connection, but does not change the quality or structure of connection.

And others see the profound economic undertow that the Internet exerts. This transformative effect on commerce portends changes in social organization and identity structures.  Lee Siegel in Against The Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob examines how the Internet has commodified personal life.

For the therapist who has begun to establish a web presence it is important to consider how to navigate the fuzzy warp and woof of cyberspace. As one ventures forth on this illusive social-business road, two ethical issues raise a cautionary flag: dual relationships and confidentiality.  Proceed with caution, but do proceed.

The notion of boundary informs the discussion of dual relationships.  Clinicians need an ethical frame to help draw that wavy line between the professional and the personal that protects against dual relationships. Two factors that useful to establishing this framework are having clarity regarding one’s intentions and an understanding of the potential impact of one’s actions.

Before deciding to act, especially now that acting is an instantaneous click, whether it is to accept an invitation to a graduation or respond to a friend request on Facebook, one needs to be clear about one’s motives and the impact of the behavior on the therapeutic relationship.  I would not accept a friend request from a client on Facebook or an invitation to connect from a client on Linkedin, as I would not accept an invitation to have a drink with a client or invite a client enter into a business relationship with me.

Friending on Facebook invites the individual into your Facebook personal world.  Depending on the privacy settings of your profile, friends can read and post on your wall, view your pictures, as well as see who your other friends are. According to Dr, Keeley Kolmes, http://drkkolmes.com/blog/ who has written extensively about social media and who has developed a social media policy statement http://drkkolmes.com/for-clinicians/social-media-policy/ , “Inviting clients to your personal profile can also be perceived as inviting them into your personal life.”

Clearly, friending clients should be avoided online as well as offline. Yet, therapists should be able to have a personal life on and offline as well as a business life online and offline. The ethical framework that one uses offline applies to online behavior, especially when one considers using Facebook or other social media for business.

The Internet and Facebook encourage connectivity and personal disclosure at the expense of discretion and privacy.  While patterns of utilization are changing, there have been too many stories depicting hastily sent emails, to the right and wrong person, regrettable photos taken and posted on profiles that later proved embarrassing if not detrimental. Concerns about privacy and in particular confidentiality are of primary importance. These concerns require that clinicians who use technology for business i.e. mobile phones, email, and the Internet, to understand the nature of the medium especially whether or not information is securely transmitted over the Internet.

A business can establish a profile known as a Fan page. Clients or customers become fans of the page by indicating that they “like” the page.  The choice of wording is regrettable and speaks to teening down of Facebook. While “Liking” is equivalent to connecting on Linkedin, it calls into question whether a boundary is crossed if a client were to “like” your page.  While the denotation of “like” is clearly social, its purpose is professional, a poor choice of words to indicate a professional connection.  It is analogous to handing a business card to a prospective client after a talk that you presented who then smiled and indicated he/she liked your talk.

The concept of “like” doesn’t cross a professional boundary or represent a gateway to that slippery slope of dual relations like “friending” does. Boundaries reflect an internal disposition, an understanding of oneself in relation to another that informs decision-making. I can hug a client, shake a client’s hand with confidence that I am not soliciting affection or staging a seduction.  Similarly I can be “liked” by clients without the question of whether or not there is a dual relationship. If I were to prolong the hug or in some way indicate I am wanting more than a hug, problems arise.  Analogously, if Liking were to lead to an exchange of personal emails, then the shadow of a dual relationship has been cast.

Why bother with Facebook when there already exists Linkedin and Twitter? Unlike Linkedin, a network established to make business connections, Facebook is a social network that superimposes a social framework on the business of networking. Facebook with its many disincentives has potential business value.

The answer rests in the enigmatic statement that follows: the future is not what it was. The geography of Cyberspace is changing rapidly and unpredictably. Facebook is a place inhabited by 600,000,000 individuals who communicate with friends, make new connections, find services and products, and recommend them to their friends, etc.  Facebook is becoming a world within a world as other social network worlds are emerging.  So if you are on Facebook, where a majority of young people spend a majority of their time online, rather than search for a therapist with Google or go to Psychology Today, (BTW Psychology Today has a Facebook fan page with almost 25,000 Likes.), you might do a search within Facebook.

The conundrum of Facebook exists within the illusive spaces between the porous, eroding enclave of the self and the evolving structures of the Internet and its multiple networks and applications that invite interactivity as an alternative/supplement to engagement. Facebook is novelty – it lures with the siren’s voice that has cast spells on individuals. The conundrum of Facebook is not what it adds, but what it takes away.

The Internet abbreviates prose, compresses space and time and inundates with content. Fragmented times, multi-tasking individuals dependent on continuous access to connection and or activity, self-absorbed yet hooked on connection, entranced by the ease of finger-tipping though life and frustrated at a second’s worth of waiting, and never alone and never waiting.