MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Tech Tuesday. To post or not to post, that is the question. Today, we're literally surrounded by digital cameras, point and clicks, SLRs and a cell phone in every pocket. We collect hundreds, even thousands, of images on our hard drives and memory cards, saving intimate family moments and documenting our day-to-day lives. So how do we figure out which pictures to share online and with whom? You can log on to Facebook or Flickr and post images instantaneously with family, friends, acquaintances and total strangers, but aren't some experiences still best left private? This Tech Tuesday, we're exploring what images we're putting on the Web and why it matters. Joining us in studio is Matthew Barrick. Matt Barrick is a professional photographer and a professor at Catholic University. Matt, good to see you again.

PROF. MATTHEW BARRICKGood to see you. Thanks for having me back.

NNAMDIAlso joining us in studio is Jennifer Golbeck, professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. She has studied and compared how different segments of the population use social media. Jen Golbeck, thank you so much for joining us.

PROF. JENNIFER GOLBECKGlad to be here.

NNAMDIAnd, of course, you can join the conversation. Call us now, 800-433-8850. What images should we be sharing, and what should stay private? How do you make that distinction? 800-433-8850. Matt, before digital cameras, photography was all about obstacles. You could only take 24, 36 pictures per roll. It took a couple of hours to develop them. You could only share them either hand to hand or by snail mail. Today, all those constraints are gone.

BARRICKRight.

NNAMDIAnd it seems they're causing us to behave differently with our cameras. Are we, in fact?

BARRICKWe are. I mean, it's becoming so much more where it's instantaneous, and the instantaneous nature of it makes it more interesting for us to post things, share things, be connected with other people, whereas before, we used to print up albums. We've printed photographs, and you had the nice little corners that went with the photographs. You put them in an album, and you spent time, actually, editing through things. And now, it's instantaneous, and we're not doing as much of the editing, and perhaps, we should. (laugh)

NNAMDIMaybe we're not giving it as much thought as we used to. Jen Golbeck, on a certain level, the pictures people post on their Facebook page or their Flickr account are much more than just images. On there, they project an image of who a person believes he or she really is or what they want us to believe they are, a mother, a party animal, a world traveler. You study how people use these tools. What do you see?

GOLBECKYou know, what you just said about photos that now we don't have to develop our pictures, we can get this really instant feedback and share them quickly. That's really true of everything. We can share anything instantly online at this point with social media. We have much quicker contact to our friends, including those who are really far away. And I think now that we're able to do that, people are choosing to share things that they might not have shared before. And they have this freedom, like you said, to project an image of how they want to appear. Usually, it tends to be a fairly accurate reflection of how they are in real life, but people can also come away seeing, say, personal photos when that person is in a work context and get a different impression that the person wants to project in that particular domain.

NNAMDIFascinating question. I'd like to hear how our listeners answer it. How does your digital identity on Facebook or some other social networking site compare to your identity in person? Is that really you, or is that somebody you want to project to the world at large? 800-433-8850. You can call us right now, or you can send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org or shoot us a tweet, @kojoshow. Matt, you're a professional photographer...

BARRICKUh-huh.

NNAMDI...but you also teach a college course on cell phone photography. As someone trained in the language of classical photography, what is happening to the way we communicate by images? Are the aesthetics changing? Are the ways we use photos changing?

BARRICKThe aesthetics are changing, and the ways that we use photographs most definitely are changing. One of the nice things about it is we're trying to train our eye more creatively, if you will. We're actually able to explore our interest in the visual imagery and the visual world, whereas before, you had mentioned, the film and the fact they've got 24 shots or 36 shots, and it costs money and time, you know, to go through that developing process. Now, we get that instant feedback, and you can take a photograph, and you can, wow, you know, maybe if I just change it or if I did this angle, or in this app, I can actually change the way I look, or I can change the background, the color. And so now, we're starting to think more aesthetically, and I find that very interesting and very intriguing with that whole process. And it's nice that we're able to do that, but at the same token, I also think that, myself being a classically-trained photographer in the darkroom, we do get away from those rules of composition.

NNAMDIYeah, I know. I've noticed it in my new iPhone, in particular. Jen, the self that we project on our Facebook page is, as you pointed out, probably very similar to the self we have in real life, except it isn't. We have created an edited, curetted version of ourselves. What do the images we post tend to say about us?

GOLBECKIt's interesting. It depends on how the person is using the social media. So, for example, I have a Twitter account and a Facebook account, and I use them both all day, all the time.

NNAMDIUh-hmm. I noticed.

GOLBECKYeah.

GOLBECKSo it's my job. My Facebook account is really more a personal space, so I don't friend my students. I'll friend colleagues but only if we're really friends-friends and not just colleagues. And I'll post up pictures there of my personal life, so me hanging out with my family or with my dogs or at a race on the weekends. Those aren't the kinds of things I tend to put on Twitter. I use that more professionally, and so I present a much different picture of myself in that domain than I do on Facebook. So what I'm presenting on Facebook is an accurate reflection of my personal life, but it's not necessarily something I want my students coming in or my colleagues coming in and seeing. So you're right. It is curated, and I think this is something people are really developing more sophistication with is who should have access to the photos that they put in each domain and how do they want to present themselves to the audience that's seeing it.

NNAMDIYoung parents are some of the most enthusiastic users...

GOLBECKThey sure are.

NNAMDI...of social networks. They post pictures of their children. They share them with grandparents and friends, but it turns out that the pictures of kids are a sort of dividing line on a site like Facebook, especially if that kid becomes a parent's profile picture. Could you explain, what is a Facebook parent?

GOLBECKOh, yeah. You've touched on a big issue here, and it's something that you talked about on the show before. Yeah, I have a lot of friends. I'm in my mid-30s, so lots of my friends are having kids now. And I like being able to see the pictures of their kids on the Facebook profile, but there is a line that you go across when your kid or your pet, anything, becomes your Facebook profile picture where you're really saying that my identity is represented by my child here. And there are wars that start raging online about whether or not you should have your child's picture as your photo on Facebook, if that's how you should present yourself as your representation.

NNAMDIAre you a Facebook parent? 800-433-8850. Tell us if you are a Facebook parent or not. What do you think your profile picture projects about you? 800-433-8850. And for those who do not have children who know the young parents of children and know them for the comprehensive nature of their existence. When that person begins to post a picture of the child on the Facebook page, does that make you feel that this friend seems to be changing, she now or he now seems to identify himself only as a parent, not as the multifaceted individual that I knew?

GOLBECKThis is definitely possible. So speaking personally, it kinda drives me crazy when my friends put their kids' pictures as their Facebook profile. Don't totally don't mind seeing the kids' pictures posted there, but you're right. People have very rich lives, and those lives don't just disappear once they have kids. So I wanna see the kids in addition to everything else. And when it becomes just a place for sharing kids' photographs, then you sort of feel like you're losing touch with that friend.

NNAMDIMatt, where do you come down on this?

BARRICKWell, me with three kids of my own...

BARRICK...I try not to put my kids' photos on my Facebook site. And again, my Facebook site is completely social, and then, I have different accounts depending on where I want people to see things and what I them to see. So I do have some of those photographs on there, but always as a profile photograph it's always just been myself, my photograph. I don't include my family or other things. And I'd asked my students about this question.

NNAMDII thought so.

BARRICKAnd one of the interesting things they said, well, we use inside joke photographs. I said, well, clarify that for me. They said we use photographs that only our friends would know the inside joke about, whether it's a cartoon or a photograph of their pet or a photograph of their car, you know, certain things like that. And I found that very intriguing.

NNAMDIIt is very intriguing, but it gets back to the point that Jen was making earlier about the differences and ways you use your Facebook page versus your Twitter page because those inside joke photos are not things you would want people who don't know you necessarily to be looking at.

BARRICKRight.

GOLBECKThat's right, and there's lots of other photos that you share that your friends might understand, but they can really get you in trouble depending on who's looking at them, even if they're totally innocent.

NNAMDIEspecially a potential employer, but that's a whole another story.

GOLBECKThat's right.

NNAMDIHere is Barbara in Fredrick, Md. Barbara, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BARBARAHi. I just wanted to say that I actually pay my nieces and nephews $20 a year to surf the Net to make sure my photos are not inappropriate.

BARBARAAnd they get (unintelligible).

NNAMDIHave they produced any photographs that you deleted?

BARBARAThey have deleted pictures, but they weren't inappropriate, just not approved.

NNAMDIWhat's the difference between inappropriate and not approved?

BARBARAWell, I would say...

NNAMDIYou just didn't like the picture.

BARBARA...(unintelligible) was really ugly that day (unintelligible).

NNAMDIBad hair day, right? You don't want your bad-hair-day pictures on your Facebook pages, huh?

BARBARAExactly. But it's a great way to get kids to clean out their boxes.

NNAMDIOh, you pay them to do their boxes?

BARBARATheir boxes and any other boxes they see.

NNAMDIOh, that works.

BARBARAIf I end up on them, they'll clean them out.

NNAMDITwenty bucks a pop. That sounds like they're making a decent living off of you, Barbara. Thank you very much for your call. Here is Gail in Silver Spring, Md. Gail, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

GAILI'm really interested in the Facebook parent thing. I think I'm a Facebook parent, and my profile picture is one of my kids. And I kind of liken it to the holiday cards that I get from my other friends who have children. And it's really only a couple of brave mothers I know who include themselves in those pictures. And mostly, on the holiday cards I receive and the ones I send is pictures of the kids because that's just looking really cute right about now. And as young mothers, it's -- you know, I don't find a lot of pictures, that I'm really pleased with them myself. So I put up as my profile kit of my -- profile picture of my child.

NNAMDICare to comment on that, Jen Golbeck?

GOLBECKWell, Gail, I'm sure you're a beautiful young mother and I would encourage you to find a great picture of yourself. And, actually, digital photography makes this great. You can sit down with your camera and take 300 pictures of yourself until you find one that looks good and put that up as your profile. And I mean, you know, personally, well, I don't like seeing the kids becoming the representation of the mother because as I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of pressure on you to have that anyway, right? A lot of your personal time gets taken away. I do understand the desire to share your kids and really show them off. But, you know, your friends are -- your friends on Facebook, they're your friends and they wanna know about you and what's going on in your life besides just the kids.

NNAMDIThey wanna know what your profile pictures might also project about you besides the fact that you're a mom.

GAILThat's right, though. I mean, I totally sympathize with that perspective, you know, that we should have our pictures up there. But I absolutely know the reason why I and many of my friends have pictures of our kids instead.

NNAMDIThank you.

GAILMaybe in about 10 years.

NNAMDIWell, come on, Gail, sooner than that. But thank you very much for sharing that with us. Here now is Cindy in Potomac, Md. Cindy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

CINDYHi. As I mentioned to the screener, I'm one step more obnoxious. I'm a Facebook grandmother. (laugh) I'm a 55-year-old woman who has my children and my first two grandchildren. And I don't think of Facebook as a yearbook picture as something that has to be a profile of me. These children have a mom who works for a government agency which shall remain unnamed so she...

NNAMDIOh, she works for the CIA, huh?

CINDYThat's right. Yeah, you're getting in the right direction.

NNAMDIGo ahead, please.

CINDYI can put my beloved grand daughters on. And I have friends around the world and they are thrilled to see these babies on Facebook.

NNAMDISo...

CINDYSo, you know, I'm up there regularly. But if I get a particularly beautiful picture, they're going front and center.

NNAMDISo you don't think that your own personality is being subsumed to that of your grandchildren?

CINDYOh, give me a break. After five kids...

CINDYIf I hadn't been subsumed 30 years ago, then I'd be -- I'm sure as hell not gonna be subsumed today. So...

NNAMDICindy, thank you very much for your call.

CINDYOkay.

NNAMDIYou have raised a new danger on the horizon on Facebook -- grandparents. It's a Tech Tuesday conversation about photographs on social networks, what you post and what you don't post. We're inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. Are you a Facebook parent? Or what does your profile picture project about you on that social networking site? 800-433-8850. We're talking with Jennifer Golbeck. She's a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland who has studied and compared how different segments of the population use social media. And Matt Barrick is a professional photographer and a professor at Catholic University. He has joined us in studio before. 800-433-8850 is the number to call.

NNAMDIMatt, most of us, probably, already categorized our content in different pools without knowing it. Let's say I shoot a picture of my family and I have 100 photos on my hard drive. I, probably, start to look at the images I have and subconsciously determine which images are okay for a relative stranger to see, which images I would show to friends and which images I would only want my closest family members to look at.

BARRICKYes, we do begin to categorize that. I think that's a very important exercise to go through. There are things that are inappropriate and should not go on the Internet. I'm not saying anything that’s lewd. I'm just saying that things that you might not want the general populous to know about your, you know, private life. One thing that I did when I first was introduced to Facebook, I started photographing, you know, my kids with, you know, sort of the artistic flare to that and I posted some of those photographs because I want some of my friends to see it. Then when I went through and I read some of the terms of service with Facebook, and I think this came out some time ago, and it said that we own the content of everything that's on here.

BARRICKAnd my immediate thought was, I'm a professional photographer and I sure don't want anyone owning my work. So I immediately pulled everything off. And then it got me into the thought process of really what should I post and what should I not post. And who is going to see this and what -- where are they going to see these images. So I tend not to put many photographs of my kids on there, and then I reserved that right for my professional images to go on to my blog site or to go on to my website.

NNAMDIBecause as you pointed out and I'd certainly like you to reiterate this, there's the question of ownership here. If you post a picture on Facebook, it belongs not to you. It belongs to Facebook.

BARRICKYes.

NNAMDIIt's a blurry question.

BARRICKIt's a very gray line, and one of the problems that you have is anytime that you post photographs, for instance, photographic contest, one of the rules if you read that are we can use these photographs for anything that we want to to further advertise, to promote ourselves. And then these photographs, just like with the Internet, they go out, and you can't get them back. And that presents a problem. Now, you still own the copyright, but -- as the photographer, you own the copyright. But as posting it on someone else's site and having it hosted, they own the content.

NNAMDIPlus, Jen, there are photos that you post to your friends, that your friends can see on your wall and then they share them.

GOLBECKThat's right. That's right. So Facebook now has some pretty sophisticated privacy mechanisms where you can control, down to the individual person, who is permitted to see your pictures. But it's really easy to get around that. You right click on a picture and you can basically copy the address and send it to anyone you want. So that totally circumvents the privacy system. So you have to be really careful about what you put up there. There are definitely controls, and it’s inconvenient to get around them but not impossible. And you have to kind of assume the worst when you're putting something up there.

NNAMDIHere's Brian in Rockville, Md. Brian, you’re on the air. Go ahead, please.

BRIANYeah. Hi. I just want to make a comment with regard to the idea of the picture -- the baby picture being put as a profile picture subsuming your personality of the other person. I really think it has more to do with you just being plain annoying to your friends because...

NNAMDII didn't wanna mention that part.

BRIANWell, I mean, you had -- because there are albums for that. You can post it on your wall. You can send it in a message. You can post it in the newsfeed. Your profile picture should be a picture of you. And, really, that also dovetails with your newsfeed too. I would like to know little statuses and pictures of what you are doing, not just you by proxy of your child. It's a quick way to get hidden in my newsfeed if that's all you're gonna do is talk about every little piece of vomit and spittle that your baby puts up.

NNAMDII'd have you know we love all of that vomit and spittle...

BARRICKYes, we do.

NNAMDI...of our babies -- but, Jen, it does raise the question of, there are times when I have looked at a friend's Facebook page and say, is this really his Facebook page or her Facebook page? I don't recognize this person I see in the profile picture.

GOLBECKThat's right. So I wouldn't be quite as harsh as Brian was...

GOLBECK...though I have some similar feelings. Yeah. There is definitely this question that we've been coming back to the whole time of what image you wanna present, and some people are really just presenting an image of themselves as a parent. And I totally understand the pride of raising a kid that goes behind that and motivates it. But, yeah, your friends sometimes wanna see things besides just the kids. Keep the kids there, but add some other things too.

NNAMDIWe go this e-mail from Miguel in Columbia Heights. By the way, Brian, thank you for your call. Miguel writes, "Perhaps we should be thanking our public servants for helping us figure out where the line is. They have also helped me figure out that a photo of myself in the mirror, never a good idea. Thank you, Congressman Lee, who taught us...

NNAMDI...this month not to send topless pictures on Craigslist. Thank you, Pastor Eddie Long, who taught me not to show off my guns, especially if I decide to become a religious leader. On the topic of Facebook parents, I'd like to add different obnoxious species for conversation, the Facebook bride."

GOLBECKOh.

BARRICKOh.

NNAMDIWe're not going to go there. Or are we, Jen?

GOLBECKNo, no. I don't wanna touch that one.

NNAMDIWe're not gonna touch that one indeed. We're gonna take a short break. We are in the middle of our winter membership campaign. But we'll do that and then we'll come back and have this tech Tuesday conversation about photos and social network. So if your call -- if you have called, stay on the line. We will get to your call. If the lines are busy, just go to out website, kojoshow.org, and join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our Tech Tuesday conversation on "Photos and Social Networks." We're talking with Jennifer Golbeck. She's a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Jen has studied and compared how different segments of the population use social media. Also joining us in studio is Matthew Barrick. He's a professional photographer and a professor at Catholic University. We're taking your calls at 800-433-8850 or you can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Jen Golbeck, it's a commonly held view that young people use these social networking sites with abandon that they recklessly post everything on their pages, pictures of parties, what's known as sexting. But you say that online behavior seems to be evolving among young people now.

GOLBECKThat's right. It's a little bit unfair to talk about kids that way. I've seen a huge change in the sophistication of my undergraduates over the last five years. I used to talk to them about what they would post, and they said what's going online, it doesn't matter, no one's gonna see it. And I would sort of explain to them what people could find and how they could see it. And by the end of the hour-long class, they would be pale and their mouths would be hanging open and they'd have this look of terror on their face. None of them ever looked at privacy settings. And now I teach undergraduates, and they're all very sophisticated about the privacy settings. They don't quite understand everything. But they know who is supposed to see things, who isn't and what sorts of implications that can have. So they're really thinking about these issues.

NNAMDIMatt, what have you been noticing with your students?

BARRICKWell, I post the question to them about what we were gonna be speaking of today and one of the students mentioned something I thought was very interesting. He said, after the first 15 minutes of a party, all cell phones and cameras are to be put away and turned off.

NNAMDIGood idea.

BARRICKAnd so, I think, they're policing themselves a little bit more on that. But they do understand that the photographs that go out are out there in cyber space pretty much forever. And the fact that future employers can look at these and they do check...

NNAMDIYup.

BARRICKAnd so I think that they are policing themselves a little bit better. One of the scary things...

NNAMDIThey check not only your page. They check your friends' pages just to make sure.

BARRICKSure.

GOLBECKYeah.

BARRICKSure. And one of the scary things that Jennifer and I were talking about is when you actually deselect one of your photographs, , de-tag it, it's actually still out there. And there are some students who don't understand that. And again, like Jennifer was saying, they start to turn this, you know, paleness that comes over them and they say, wow, really? Yeah, really. It's still out there.

NNAMDIYup. Indeed it is. And here we have Shelly in Rockville, Md., with another warning for us. Shelly, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

SHELLYYes. Hi. I work for local law enforcement, and I was literally on my way back from giving a cyber safety presentation to some social workers and therapists and talking about this very thing. And what we see is certainly the teenagers taking inappropriate pictures of themselves, some of them rise to the level of child pornography. And, of course, transmitting them to boyfriends and, yeah, mostly boyfriends or girlfriends. And while it is, you know, some of them does rise to a level of child pornography and actually technically they -- technically on paper, they could be charged with those felony, the manufacturing and transmission of child pornography and certainly the possession of child pornography and misdemeanor. These kids don't realize it and they don't realize that when they send, you know, these girls send these pictures to the boys -- their boyfriends, it doesn't just go to their -- one boyfriend. The boyfriend sends it to all his friends, and they totally lose control of that image. One thing I would do is just refer your callers or your audience to netsmartz.org because they have a lot of educational information available to kids and adults and it's age appropriate to...

NNAMDIAnd that's netsmartz.org. We'll try to provide -- make sure we provide a link to that, netsmartz.org.

SHELLYwww.netsmartz.org. It is the educational arm of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children here in Alexandria.

NNAMDIOkay.

SHELLYSo I would just, you know, they have a lot of information.

NNAMDIThank you for sharing that with us, Shelly. We move on to Tiffany in Fairfax, Va. Tiffany, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

TIFFANYThank you. Hi, Kojo. I was just calling because my college girlfriends and I, we're now 40, but we've been great, great friends for years. We actually, a few years ago, came up with kind of a code of conduct for Facebook. And at first I thought it was kind of silly, but it has been great for us. And I would just encourage a lot of your users to do that with their friends. And in that code of conduct, any picture that you might not want everybody who's your friend to see, your friends need to get your approval before they put it on their page or your page or link you or anything, because as your professionals there said, just because you unlink it doesn't mean it's not out there. And I just -- again, at the time I thought it was fairly silly, but now, I am really glad that we have an unspoken word amongst us as to what in our group is appropriate. And, you know, pictures of yourself when you were 18 doing something you might not want somebody age 40 to see that you were doing is just really important, I think.

NNAMDIYou said it's an unspoken code. How is the code shared?

TIFFANYWell, what we did is we kind of had a conference call and just said amongst each other, you know, why don't we -- we're all professionals now, what do we think is important as this Facebook thing evolves? And so I guess it was spoken at one time, but now it no longer needs to be spoken about. We know what each other's expectations are in that realm. And I think it's just alleviated any problems that one might have that you hear of people having with, gosh, I really didn't want anybody to see that picture when I was 18 and I really don't want them to see it now. (laugh)

NNAMDIJen Golbeck, how important that is? I just wanted to make sure, Tiffany, that it wasn't one of those long licensing agreements that end with I agree. (laugh)

GOLBECKYeah. She raises a couple really interesting points there. One is that your friends can be posting pictures of you and even if you untag yourself as we've said, those pictures are still out there. So you don't really have that control over the photos, right? It's not just what you're sharing, it's what your friends are sharing, and those things also can get out just like pictures that you share. And this is a serious enough problem that there are companies out there like one of your other caller said she hired her nieces and nephews to go search out pictures of her online. There are companies that will do reputation management for you online where they go look for pictures of you that can be found along with posts about you on people's blogs or tweets and try to clean that up. So it's become a serious enough issue that now people are actually making money and helping you keep track of those things. So it's absolutely something to keep in mind, and it sounds like she has a good agreement with those friends.

NNAMDIMatt.

BARRICKI agree. I actually subscribe to a service which actually goes out and looks for my photographs. And in photographs, you have metadata. And in this sort of digital file, you have metadata, so you can actually tag these photographs with specific things like your name, date, copyright information. And so these services can go out and actually seek out these photographs based upon this metadata or these tags. And I find that it's a very useful tool because I've actually ran across a couple of entities that were using my photographs in the library where they did not belong, and I was not getting paid for it. And so, it helps to do that. But also, it really gets back to self policing. Don't put anything out there that you wouldn't want someone else to see.

NNAMDITiffany, thank you for your call. We got this posting on our website by Heather who says, "With the information embedded in picture files including time, date and location, is it safe to post pictures of your children or your self for that matter on social networking sites? How can we ensure safety?" Matt.

BARRICKAs far as the metadata tags are concerned, you can set some of those specifically to have certain information in. But nowadays, they have GPS locators. So yeah, you're right that if your camera does have that GPS function to it, it's going to tell you exactly where the photograph was taken. And there are photographers that use these for, you know, specific purposes. But as it becomes now, you can track anybody for anything any time.

NNAMDIJen, one of the problems when platforms like Facebook and Flickr first came out was that they often had clunky privacy settings. You couldn't really differentiate between different kinds of friends and family, different grades of privacy. That's changed significantly.

GOLBECKThey're definitely better than they were. I wouldn't go so far as to say Facebook is not clunky anymore. But yeah, there are -- if you get a little bit of practice and a little bit of instruction, it's easy to set up groups of people and then very quickly for a photograph pick which groups can see it or which can't. Like I said before, it's easy to circumvent that, but it's definitely worth setting up and doing right the first time.

NNAMDIWe're having a Tech Tuesday conversation on photos and social networks, inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. What images do you think we should be sharing and what should stay private, and how do you personally draw the distinction? Call us at 800-433-8850 or send us a tweet @kojoshow. We move on now to Letty in Alexandria, Va. Hi, Letty.

LETTYHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. I am just calling regarding -- a few minutes ago, you guys were talking about parents who use their children's pictures as their profile pictures. I'm currently staying at home with my infant, and I choose not to use her picture as my profile picture partly just for her own privacy, but also, you know, she was a kid that didn't really happen overnight. It took a while to get to her. And sometimes it was kind of -- it was nice seeing my friend's kids, but it was also kind of bittersweet to see pictures of their babies as their profile pictures. It's like, yay, you have a kid. That's wonderful.

NNAMDII'm having problems. (laugh)

LETTYYeah. And, I mean, you know, thank God, I love her and I don't begrudge anyone who wants to do that, but still I'm like, you know, maybe a shred of sensitivity particularly, you know, I'm in my 30s. This stuff doesn't happen at a frat party anymore.

NNAMDILetty, thank you very much for sharing that with us. We got a comment on our website from -- oh, I don't know who this is. This might be sent anonymously. "The profile picture is a pictorial representation of your life, lifestyle, et cetera. If you have a kid, then you're a parent. If it is an attractive, revealing picture, you're a single person. If it is you with a boyfriend, girlfriend on the profile picture, then you are in a relationship, et cetera. Once we hold to the strict mantra of a professional picture, you can go to LinkedIn. On a personal level, I just graduated from a design school and there, we Photoshop, alter pictures for amusement. Is it wrong to alter pictures? Are we gonna get into trouble? The great thing about Facebook is it is not conforming to rules and making new ones and adjusting the social norm." What do you think, Matt?

BARRICKI use Photoshop all the time. (laugh) If you actually look at my photo, yes, there's Photoshop involved. Photoshop is a wonderful tool. And as I tell my students, Photoshop is a tool. Don't use it as an excuse. And I think that with the use of Photoshop now, we sort of, you know, blend that line between, you know, actuality and fantasy. And it can be used responsibly. And I have some students who use it, again, getting back to that inside joke profile photo, where they'll actually warp their photographs and change it that way. And obviously, you can tell it’s humorous.

BARRICKBut you get into a very serious topic when you start talking about changing images in a professional realm. And that's for a whole another conversation. But I think for the common use, we all wanna look good. And as professional photographer, when I point my camera at someone, I'm doing a portrait, they're not gonna look at me and say take the worst picture you can, please, you know? They want the best possible photograph. And I think Photoshop as modern tools help us to do that.

NNAMDIYour take on that, Jen?

GOLBECKI Photoshop all of my pictures that I put online too.

NNAMDIAll...

BARRICKGood for you. (laugh)

GOLBECKNo, not all of them, but a lot of them. Yeah, I think it's a great tool. And I had said to Gail, when she called, you can take 300 pictures of yourself and find the good one. You can also take a couple and then Photoshop it to make it look right. So I think it's a great thing. And I don't see any problems with using it on Facebook.

NNAMDIOnto Mr. C (sp?) in Potomac Gardens in Washington. Mr. C, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MR. CI haven't talked to you in a while.

NNAMDIOh, yeah. Thanks for calling.

COr you probably forgot Mr. C.

NNAMDINo, I remember Mr. C.

COkay. I -- my question changed eight times since I’ve been listening. I was on my way out the door. And I hate every time I listen to you, I have made all my way out the door and I can never leave.

NNAMDIWell, head us with number eight.

CSay it again? Oh, okay. I'm using my Facebook for -- to communicate with most the people at the church. And, or, if I don't have a business card, let's just say, type in (unintelligible) faithful. You know, that's my business card conversation answering service real quick. And the YouTube, I've been using that for most of the kids I've been working with here. I just been videotaping them and putting them up. But as -- now, I have to -- I'm not able to work in the rec room because I don't have insurance because I have a new company, you know?

NNAMDIYeah.

CSo now, I'm thinking, I already started my company up on YouTube and I might have -- I think I need to put all my pictures back off in here, because I don't have -- I haven't put the safety things. I have all -- from these kids on there, and I don't know if it's a good thing or not now. Is videos with, you know, fixing bicycles, we work in a microphones, we, you know, singing and things like that.

NNAMDIThis is a story of best intentions. Allow me to have Matt Barrick give you some advice about what you might wanna do at this point.

BARRICKPhoto release forms. (laugh) Photo release forms. Anytime you go into a situation where you working in a community, you're working in a church or working in a school, there are guidelines which you really should follow and that you should have all of the consents from parents to be able to photograph, video tape, whatever for the kids. And that's protecting them. It's protecting you. It's making sure that everyone understands where the photographs are gonna go and what's going to actually happen. As far as pulling things off now, I hate to say it in this way, but you don't know where they are.

NNAMDIYeah, you don't. And I'm afraid, Mr. C, that's about all the time we have. One very quick thing though, Matt...

BARRICKYes.

NNAMDI...the New York Times recently reported that some hospitals are explicitly banning certain recording devices from labor and delivery room. It's interesting when we have these finite spaces where we cannot record images. Talk about that.

BARRICKCorrect. And, again, that gets back to liability, and they don't want to -- now, I did that with all three of my kids. (laugh) I had a camera and their video camera, very tasteful, mind you...

NNAMDIYeah, but you're up shooting professionally at work.

BARRICKI am shooting professionally, yes. I'm doing something a little bit differently. But, you know, it's protecting the hospital. It's protecting you. Do I think it's a good practice? Yes, I do. It's just -- it takes away from some of, you know, your personal intention. But maybe we could find a good line of doing that.

NNAMDIHow would you, Jen, like to have a camera on you every day while you're doing your job?

GOLBECKOh, no, I wouldn't like that. And I also do not wanna see any of my friends posting videos of themselves giving birth on Facebook.

NNAMDII'm afraid that's all the time we have. Jennifer Golbeck is a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, who has studied and compared how different segments of the population use social media. Jen, thank you for joining us.

GOLBECKMy pleasure.

NNAMDIMatthew Barrick is a professional photographer and a professor at Catholic University. Matt, as always, thank you for joining us.

BARRICKThank you so much.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.