My personal rules on who I friend on FB have changed since I started. Only 5 of the 168 friends I have are people I have never met face to face at least once or twice. The rest are former classmates and people from around my town. Some of the locals who friended me were people I didn’t normally talk to when I saw them. So I have made it a point now to make sure I talk to them when I see them face to face now. I currently turn down friend requests from people I haven’t met, but I do write them back and explain why. If I were using my FB page to promote a business then I would have different rules, but for personal use this is the best for me.

One of the police officers in our town is an internet crimes investigator and he tells people to only friend people you see face to face at least once per month. This is a bit much for me as it would eliminate all my former classmates, but might be better rule for a parent if they allowed their child to have a social network page.