The school's Facebook Challenge flouts nothing less than a global megatrend. More than 500 million users spend 700 billion minutes a month on the site. Soon, the movie about it, The Social Network, could make a friend of Oscar.
"We're not saying Facebook is bad and stay off of it forever," said Andrea Mantilla, 21, a resident assistant who helped organize the Facebook Challenge. "We're asking them to see how it's affecting their lives."
Is the social-networking site just an efficient way to keep in touch with friends? Or has it become a habit with ill effects on schoolwork, relationships, and self-esteem?
Every Monday during February, a support group will meet so students can talk about it.
All 3,500 students enrolled at the main campus, as well as at Bucks County branches in Bensalem and Newtown, were invited to take up the challenge, a joint effort of the college's Counseling Center and Disability Services Office and the Residence Life division. Slightly more than one-half of 1 percent did.
Elsewhere around the country, other student groups have forsworn Facebook. Last year, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology blacked out social-networking sites - but only for a week.
Mantilla and Diana Piperata, director of Holy Family's counseling department, came up with the challenge after Mantilla gave up Facebook three months ago. She likened the Facebook experience to being sucked into the minutiae of other people's lives.
"It gets old," Mantilla said. "And I don't want to turn into that person who constantly updates what they're doing all day."
At the college, Piperata noted an increased incidence of Facebook-related anxiety and depression in students who came in for counseling. Many had lost friendships and severed relationships because of something posted - and often misconstrued, she said.
