Broviak told MSNBC Friday, “What a violation of my daughter’s privacy this whole episode was,” adding that the experience took “a huge toll on my daughter, who ended up crying through most of the rest of the day and therefore missed most of her classes. She was embarrassed and very upset.” She says when she confronted the school about the issue, they told her it was routine policy to investigate students’ social networking pages and cellphones.

Geneva schools superintendent Kent Mutchler told MSNBC Friday that Broviak’s version of events is inaccurate, stating, “We would never demand someone’s password. When you have someone’s password, you open yourself up to other issues.” But alarmingly, he added, “If we have a disruptive situation, a school [official] will ask to see the page, and if the student refuses, we call the parents … There are different levels of concern. If there is a drug trafficking suspicion, we’ll get the police involved. If it’s something like cyberbullying, we’ll say, ‘This has been reported to us,’ and ask to see the page. We ask, ‘Is there something you want to show us?’ that sort of thing. And they volunteer.”

Oh, they just up and volunteer? Let’s think about this a minute. You’re a 13-year-old. It’s implied you’re in trouble for something, and your teacher or principal suggests that if you have nothing to hide, why wouldn’t you share what you’ve been doing online? That’s a fantastically intimidating and pathetic abuse of power, wielded against the kids you’re daily teaching to comply to your requests.

And, as Broviak points out, that kind of behavior isn’t just a violation of the student’s privacy –  but that of anyone in her social media circle. “Some families communicate through Facebook,” Broviak told MSNBC. “What if her aunt was going through a divorce or had an illness? And now there’s these anonymous people reading through this information.”

Sadly, this kind of repulsive invasion isn’t an isolated incident. Last month, Garrett, Ind., high school student Austin Carroll was expelled for using profanity on Twitter. And, mind-bogglingly enough, earlier this month 4,000 New Jersey third-graders were asked “to write about a secret and why it was hard to keep” on a standardized test.

Schools are — not without justification — scared witless about the ease with which kids commit all kinds of wrongs via social media. They’re concerned about how they interact, and the consequences of their communications. Great. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the basic fact that kids are entitled to privacy, too. They’re entitled to complain about their homework load; they’re entitled to post silly pictures of themselves; they’re entitled, in short, to express themselves on their own turf in their own terms. Sometimes that notion that kids are out there behaving in ways we’re not privy to can be terrifying for adults. Tough. How about working with them to include empathy and conflict resolution in the curriculum, instead of cracking down on their extracurricular lives? How about talking to them? Because snooping around in people’s private lives, coercing them into compromising behavior – it’s called bullying. And isn’t there already enough of that in our schools?

They are the resisters.

“I’m absolutely in touch with everyone in my life that I want to be in touch with,” Arwood says. “I don’t need to share triviality with someone that I might have known for six months 12 years ago.”

Even without people like Arwood, Facebook is one of the biggest business success stories in history. The site had 1 million users by the end of 2004, the year Mark Zuckerberg started it in his Harvard dorm room. Two years later, it had 12 million. Facebook had 500 million by summer 2010 and 901 million as of March 31, according to the company.

That staggering rise in popularity is one reason why Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering is one of the most hotly anticipated in years. The company’s shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday under the ticker symbol “FB”. Facebook is likely to have an estimated market valuation of some $100 billion, making it worth more than Kraft Foods, Ford or Disney.

Facebook still has plenty of room to grow, particularly in developing countries where people are only starting to get Internet access. As it is, about 80 percent of its users are outside U.S. and Canada.

But if Facebook is to live up to its pre-IPO hype and reward the investors who are clamoring for its stock this week, it needs to convince some of the resisters to join. Two out of every five American adults have not joined Facebook, according to a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll. Among those who are not on Facebook, a third cited a lack of interest or need.

If all those people continue to shun Facebook, the social network could become akin to a postal system that only delivers mail to houses on one side of the street. The system isn’t as useful, and people aren’t apt to spend as much time with it. That means fewer opportunities for Facebook to sell ads.

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, says that new communications channels — from the telephone to radio, TV and personal computers — often breed a cadre of holdouts in their early days.

“It’s disorienting because people have different relationships with others depending on the media they use,” Rainie says. “But we’ve been through this before. As each new communications media comes to prominence, there is a period of adoption.”

Len Kleinrock, 77, says Facebook is fine for his grandchildren, but it’s not for him.

“I do not want more distractions,” he says. “As it is, I am deluged with email. My friends and colleagues have ready access to me and I don’t really want another service that I would feel obliged to check into on a frequent basis.”

Kleinrock says his resistance is generational, but discomfort with technology isn’t a factor.

After all, Kleinrock is arguably the world’s first Internet user. The University of California, Los Angeles professor was part of the team that invented the Internet. His lab was where researchers gathered in 1969 to send test data between two bulky computers —the beginnings of the Arpanet network, which morphed into the Internet we know today.

“I’m having a ‘been-there, done-that’ feeling,” Kleinrock says. “There’s not a need on my part for reaching out and finding new social groups to interact with. I have trouble keeping up with those I’m involved with now.”

Thomas Chin, 35, who works at an advertising and media planning company in New York, says he may be missing out on what friends-of-friends-of-friends are doing, but he doesn’t need Facebook to connect with family and closer acquaintances.

“If we’re going to go out to do stuff, we organize it (outside) of Facebook,” he says.

Some people don’t join the social network because they don’t have a computer or Internet access, are concerned about privacy, or generally dislike Facebook. Those without a college education are less likely to be on Facebook, as are those with lower incomes. Women who choose to skip Facebook are more likely than men to cite privacy issues, while seniors are more likely than those 50-64 years old to cite computer issues, according the AP-CNBC poll.

About three-quarters of seniors are not on Facebook. By contrast, more than half of those under 35 use it every day.

The poll of 1,004 adults nationwide was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications May 3-7 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Steve Jones, a professor who studies online culture and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says many resisters consider Facebook to be too much of a chore.

“We’ve added social networking to our lives. We haven’t added any hours to our days,” Jones says. “The decision to be online on Facebook is simultaneously a decision not to be doing something else.”

Jones says many people on Facebook try to overcome that by multitasking, but they end up splitting their attention and engaging with others online only superficially.

Arwood, 47, a restaurant manager in Chicago, says she was surprised when colleagues on an English-teaching program in rural Spain in 2010 opted to spend their breaks checking Facebook.

“I spent my time on break trying to learn more about the Spanish culture, really taking advantage of it,” she says. “I went on walks with some of the students and asked them questions.”

Kariann Goldschmitt, 32, a music professor at New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla., was on Facebook not long after its founding in 2004, but she quit in 2010. In part, it was because of growing concerns about her privacy and Facebook’s ongoing encouragement of people to share more about themselves with the company, with marketers and with the world.

She says she’s been much more productive since leaving.

“I was a typical user, on it once or twice a day,” she says. “After a certain point, I sort of resented how it felt like an obligation rather than fun.”

Besides Facebook resisters and quitters, there are those who take a break. In some cases, people quit temporarily as they apply for new jobs, so that potential employers won’t stumble on photos of their wild nights out drinking. Although Facebook doesn’t make it easy to find, it offers options for both deleting and suspending accounts.

Goldschmitt says it takes effort to stay in touch with friends and relatives without Facebook. For instance, she has to make mental notes of when her friends are expecting babies, knowing that they have become so used to Facebook “that they don’t engage with us anymore.”

“I’m like, ‘Hmmm, when is nine months?’ I have to remember to contact them since they won’t remember to tell me when the baby’s born.”

Neil Robinson, 54, a government lawyer in Washington, says that when his nephew’s son was born, pictures went up on Facebook almost immediately. As a Facebook holdout, he had to wait for someone to email photos.

After years of resisting, Robinson plans to join next month, mostly because he doesn’t want to lose touch with younger relatives who choose Facebook as their primary means of communication.

But for every Robinson, there is an Edelstein, who has no desire for Facebook and prefers email and postcards.

“I prefer to keep my communications personal and targeted,” says Jake Edelstein, 41, a pharmaceutical consultant in New York. “You’re getting a message that’s written for you. Clearly someone took the time to sit down to do it.”

___

Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington contributed this report.

It’s no accident that the president’s change of heart happened to make for a perfect sound bite. Nearly as fast as Barack Obama, leader of the free world, could utter the words “Same-sex couples should be able to get married,” to ABC News correspondent Robin Roberts, @barackobama — the president’s not-nearly-as-popular-as@JustinBieber Twitter account — was announcing “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.” As of Thursday morning, it had been retweeted over 56,000 times and counting.

And just like that, what had been a fuzzy campaign issue for Obama just a week ago became a defiant stance – and an easily forwarded post. The president’s Twitter and Facebook accounts wasted no time issuing a photo of Obama with his statement, under the heading, “history.” The campaign’s main page itself immediately splashed up the quote, along with the ABC News clip and the invitation to “stand up with the president.” And the campaign’s colorful, friendly-looking poster stating that “Every single American/Gay Straight Lesbian Bisexual Transgender/Deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society/It’s a pretty simple proposition” popped into a place of honor on the Obama Pinterest and Instagram pages.

Elections can turn on a few provocative words – from “Read my lips” to “It’s the economy, stupid” to, simply, “Hope.” But there’s never been a time when a single sentiment could be parroted across so many different platforms. The Obama campaign knows this, and has shrewdly seized upon the immediate, visceral reaction that one sentence can inspire with impressive immediacy. Watch and learn, Romney. Though we’ve yet to see how the president’s “evolved” stance will shake out into real votes in November, for now, it sure makes for a whole lot of likes and pins. Whatever happens next, Obama’s won Twitter.

“He’s not sure how he feels about you?!” I shouted. “You are smart, beautiful and kind. For God’s sake, you play piano for old folks at nursing homes and knit hats to support children in Africa! You’re borderline perfect. What’s he not sure of?”

Katie told me to take a deep breath. It would all be fine, she assured me. She explained that John was a nice guy whom she enjoyed getting to know, but ultimately they had very different interests. They lived on different coasts. It could never work.

“But … he was so cute,” I said, pouting.

I asked if Katie wanted to ease the heartbreak by cracking open a fresh pint of Chunky Monkey and playing an endless loop of Amy Winehouse. She did not. I offered a marathon of cheesy romantic comedies so we could sob together at all of the sappy bits, even though she didn’t seem very sad. She declined and said she had to finish her position paper for Junior Model United Nations. I stared at her, incredulous. Was she having no reaction to being text-dumped by her first boyfriend? Maybe she needed a maternal embrace to just let it all out.

“Do you need a hug?” I asked.

“Uh, do you?” she replied.

In fact, I did. Katie told me that there would be other boys. “If he can’t see what a great mom I have, he’s not worth it,” she joked. Then, more seriously, she explained that this was not a rejection, but two people realizing that they aren’t right for each other.

I held her shoulders, examining my daughter at arm’s length. “Are you sure you’re 14?” I asked.

“Are you sure you’re 45?” she retorted.

I felt a bit guilty that my protracted adolescence might force Katie, in response, to grow up too quickly. She may have felt that one of us had to be mature, and since I’m clearly not up to the task, it fell to her.

I wondered if I was cheating her out of something precious and irreplaceable by becoming too emotionally embroiled in her private life. Did my romance with her love life short-change her experience?

Later, I confessed all this to Katie, who told me that I mustn’t overthink things. She said she knows how to establish boundaries and she would certainly let me know if I’d crossed any. Katie returned to her homework; I turned back to my novel, the pink one with the cupcake on the cover.

I realize that becoming involved with my daughter’s love life is a somewhat pathetic attempt to dip myself into the Fountain of Youth. Because the reality is that being the mother of a teenager is a reality check, a constant reminder that I am no longer young, nor will I ever be again.

I miss the simpler life of my teen years when I’d spend hours on the phone twirling my hair around my finger and giggling about boys. (It’s not quite the same with graying hair.) I miss the days before my feet needed their own doctor. I miss the time when I truly believed anything was possible. Now, I’m not so sure it is. After 45 years of living, there has been too much disappointment. Hope is alive, but it’s taken a few hits and may be a little worse for wear.

As much as I admire Katie’s ability to feel whole outside the context of a romantic relationship, it poses a painfully stark contrast to who I was at her age. In fact, I’m not certain that I’ve come all that far. My need for validation is bottomless, and I am both astounded and grateful that I haven’t passed on this character defect to my child.

My husband of nearly 20 years tells me he loves me every day. William humors me by making grand Shakespearean-style proclamations of his affection. (Sometimes there is even a horn involved.) He has been known to playfully throw down his jacket to demonstrate his chivalry. It is a loving gesture with an added layer of meaning: Is this enough? Are we there yet?

Katie’s first boyfriend was special to me for several reasons. The two met at my 30-year summer camp reunion, the place where I shared my first kiss with Finn O’Lee under a crabapple tree near the playground. He had a mop of red hair and carried a basketball everywhere he went. It was true like.

Camp St. Regis closed in 1981, but the owners, the Kennedy family, kept their 15-bedroom home and a large waterfront lot in New York. Through the miracle of Facebook, a camp alumni group was started and plans for a summer reunion began.

At the event, the flag was lowered by two grandsons of the long-deceased “Papa Don” Kennedy, and the sun began to set on the bay. I’d spent 10 summers at Camp St. Regis and each sunset was a spectacular display of either fiery orange brushstrokes or sheets of pink cotton candy against the sky. This one topped them all.

An hour later, a bonfire was blazing and old friends were singing Simon and Garfunkel classics with the usual suspects strumming their guitars. I was chatting with my old friend John when our heads instinctively turned toward the grassy area leading to the beach. We saw two silhouettes, a girl and a boy sitting 4 feet apart, their backs toward the rest of us. The tension between them was palpable as they looked out toward the water.

“Who’s that girl with my son?” John asked, almost giddy.

When I told him it was Katie, he did a little gallop-in-place girly move, which I took to mean he approved. We wondered how long they’d been sitting there and noticed that they had inched closer. Soon they were sitting just close enough that their arm hair touched.

The youngest Kennedy grandson scurried to join us, and asked if John and I saw what was going on between our kids. We told him we had money on what time they would kiss. We had become helicopter cupids.

Ultimately, the mutual first kiss never happened, and I honestly don’t know which parent was more disappointed. The elder John managed to snap a photo with his cellphone, which was such low quality that it wound up looking like a sonogram of twins.

Katie and I returned home to San Diego, and the texting with young John continued for months. He added to his Facebook profile that one of his interests was waiting for Katie to return his texts. I thought that was the cutest thing I had ever heard. Katie shrugged and said she thought there were more direct ways to communicate that he wanted a quicker response. I looked at her like she was out of her mind. “Yeah, but none half as adorable!”

“Want to Facebook stalk him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

I collapsed in a sigh of exasperation. I had so much to teach this child. “We check out his page and see what’s he’s doing, where’s he’s been, what’s on his wall, whose wall he’s writing on,” I explained. She looked blankly. “We can see photos,” I said stressing the word to entice.

“This is really creepy, Mom.”

I chose to see it as investigative. Remembering that she had an interest in joining the CIA or FBI, I tried to show her the parallels between Googling boys and saving the world. She wasn’t buying it. She gave me some lame response about how if she wanted to know something about him, she would simply ask.

Days after the breakup, John and Katie were texting each other again. They were buddies now, and he told her he had a big date with a new girl. If his intent was to make her jealous, he missed the mark and instead hit me. Hard. “He has another girlfriend so soon?” I spat.

“Why not?” Katie shrugged. “She sounds like a nice girl. They seem well suited for each other.”

My love and admiration for Katie grew even more. I closed my eyes tight and I wished that she would never know heartbreak. I knew this was impossible, but in this moment, her life was perfect and I wanted to keep it this way for her.

Katie reminds me of the delicate glass Christmas tree ornament I am always terrified of breaking. It is a clear, paper-thin glass teardrop that catches the light and sparkles on our tree perfectly. Each year when I pack it up, I am always surprised and relieved that it hasn’t fallen.

John will probably always have a special place in Katie’s heart. He most definitely will have one in mine. He was the first boy with the good sense to adore my daughter.

Even in his breakup text, John acted with integrity. He didn’t lash out or get mean. He didn’t play games. He told her the truth and I respect him for the way he handled the relationship from start to finish. He was a sweet kid. I miss him already.

Twilt (n): the particular brand of guilt or self-reproach that results from posting, liking or commenting on items on Facebook or Twitter while simultaneously not responding to emails, text messages, phone calls or other types of personal communication with the knowledge or anxiety that the specific message senders will notice your public offerings and question your lack of private ones. Twilt, while related, is not the same as the guilt that results from general Internet-specific procrastination such as browsing blogs or online shopping, which, though it may result in its own brand of self-disgust, generally has no public shame component.

Adam Zagajewski, in his essay “The Shabby and Sublime,” says that the poetry of recent years is “marked by a disproportion … between powerful expressions of the inner life and the ceaseless chatter of self-satisfied craftsmen.” The same could be said for Facebook updates, our contemporary confessional. I have eaten the plums in the refrigerator, and they were yummy. Facebook is bad for me because I not only embarrass myself but I keenly feel the embarrassment of others whose lack of discretion, as I perceive it, I quietly judge and am embarrassed by all the same.

When someone starts a conversation with me on Facebook, in public, I’m mortified. There’s a message function for that! I have email and a cellphone. Let me respond when I can, away from the watch of hundreds. Sometimes I disable my Wall so people can’t write things there, until someone points it out and I feel guilty that I’ve done this so I change it back. I don’t like to talk on the phone in public and when a friend speaks too loudly in a cafe I am nervous that someone will overhear our conversation. At home I don’t like the sensation of my husband overhearing me order pizza, let alone having more sensitive conversations with friends. I have never been one to kiss and tell, and I like to keep my private life private. Why I have a Facebook account at all still perplexes me. I like the idea of seeing what’s going on, but I don’t want to always be a part of it. I don’t want to not be a part of it either. I want to swoop in and swoop out. But Facebook doesn’t allow for inconsistency without amplifying it, a constant record of our obsessions and our contradictions to the point of caricature.

The conversations between couples embarrass me the most, whether they’re sentimental or self-referential. It’s not that you live with that person and somehow don’t need electronic communication — I often text my husband across the table at a bar to make a snarky comment, or sometimes I send ridiculous things to the online printer in his office just to be impish. But it’s done in private, between us. That’s the point. It’s something about the relationship having a public facade so contrived and self-aware that makes my eyes water with shame. We all have facades and personas, of course, that are not Internet confined. Game faces. Once, at a reading, a poet thanked his wife so gushingly that I whispered to my friend, “That guy is totally having an affair.” I didn’t know a thing about him. But it turns out, I was right. Maybe the wife requested the shout-out, but if I were his wife I would have smiled at the crowd and taken flight. Up, up and away.

Do you remember “This American Life’s” 2001 episode about Superpowers, which poses the question: If you could have a superpower, would you choose Flight or Invisibility? My first reaction was and remains, flight. To fly! I’m petite and have spent a lifetime trying to fight invisibility, being intellectually overlooked, or feeling insignificant (this is not simply a result of my size but an entire slew of issues that would benefit from Lacanian psychoanalysis, which if I had I’d have to talk about in my status updates). I still have dreams where I’m flying, frequent dreams, and when I wake up I feel inexplicably happy. When I fly in my dreams, I don’t sputter or start or anxiously hover. I soar, I glide, and it’s fluid, like a manta ray moving through water. When I fly in my dreams I am all grace. My desire for flight would get me places faster, and in style.

But maybe my desire for flight is a sort of conditional invisibility; the idea of flight not only as the act of flying but the act of fleeing. I want to be part of the scene but to float somehow above it, to engage in the action but then be able to gracefully exit. I want to swoop on in and then glide away. But I want to be seen, for sure, and present. I just don’t want to have to stay, and I certainly don’t want anyone to comment on it.

It is also, of course, part of being a writer, to be part of a scene but also removed. Writing is about observation, but if I observe and immediately state then I’ve lost it, released it. The essay allows an expression of doubt but the Facebook update or conversation has a sort of self-satisfied glibness to it. It doesn’t invite dialogue but somehow challenges it. There is also the lack of control. It could go anywhere. Someone could say something too revealing or racist or just plain idiotic, and there it is, linked to your name. It is not a place for the anxious, Facebook.

And there is the difference of stance. An essay is an attempt at dialogue but a status update is a solicitation; the first is a meaningful hesitation or an assertive pronouncement, a languorous dip in a warm sea or a fast-paced race in a pool. But the essay swims all the same. A Facebook update is a haphazard nose dive into a near-empty watering hole. What if I break my neck? Will someone find me if my head is bleeding? If I post and no one comments, do I exist?

The comparison between the two forms needn’t be made; we know the difference, yet it might explain my relative comfort, even ease, with the personal essay and my fear of any public sort of dialogue. Do I want to be invisible or do I want to fly? Although the personal is intimate there is also the artifice of distance. When I fly in my dreams I can see myself flying while being aware of my place on the ground. Philip Lopate argues that a good essayist must see oneself from the ceiling, must turn oneself into a character. He is not advocating a “self-absorbed navel-gazing” but instead “a release from narcissism,” an ability to be able to “see yourself in the round.”

I admit I am often self-amused by my status updates (what else are they for?), but I am rarely satisfied with them. In the rare case I am amused with myself when writing anything, that to me is a sure sign that it’s going to need a very careful edit, or that it’s garbage.

What I love best about that episode of “This American Life” is the moving analysis at the end, immediately after several of the show’s guests comment on what it means to want invisibility or flight. John Hodgman reflects:

Flight and invisibility touch a nerve. Actually, they touch two different nerves, speak to very different primal desires and unconscious fears … In the end, it’s not a question of what kind of person flies and what kind of person fades. We all do both. … At the heart of this decision, the question I really don’t want to face, is this. Who do you want to be, the person you hope to be, or the person you fear you actually are?

Am I becoming someone on Facebook or am I trying to escape her? I’m happy my partner is not on Facebook because I am spared that public embarrassment, of people wishing us happy anniversary or the pressure to comment, or not comment, on his witticisms or offerings: J. just made fabulous butternut squash ravioli! From scratch! Natalie likes this. And then he would like my liking, and another friend would find it cute, and like it too, and no one would know that we spent the last hour fighting because I overloaded the dryer and almost burned down the house.

I wouldn’t mind if he joined Facebook, though, because he is the face man of our relationship and it would take some of the completely imagined but hugely felt pressure off me. (“Could you please like so-and-so’s photos of her daughter’s dance recital?”) If we had a band, he’d be the lead singer and I’d be the bassist, hiding behind my hair. (No, not the drummer! No one sees the drummer!) The bassist can look up and make eye contact with the crowd for a moment and the crowd will go wild. They don’t expect it but they hope for it all the same. The face man: He has to be on all the time. It’s his job to be on.

Do you remember the scene in “Sex in the City” where Carrie, upon receiving an email, ducks underneath her desk and shrieks, Oh my god, can he see me? A decade later it seems charming, like a text message from our grandmother. Yet the anxiety remains. Now, I suffer from what is surely a new psychological disorder: a DSM-IV classifiable paranoia that all my personal conversations are somehow being broadcast on Twitter. Is there a word for that?