Hingham Students Don't 'LIKE' New Facebook Timeline

In the next few weeks, Facebook will start requiring people to switch to their new profile format known as “Timeline” and some students are worried about their privacy being invaded.

The timeline format is your life on Facebook in reverse chronological order. At the top are your recent status posts, photos and comments and as you scroll down, you’ll see posts and photos from the past months and years.   Anyone viewing your profile will easily be able to click one of the "Show" links to get all posts from a particular month or year and even jump quickly to older posts but that concerns some Hingham students.

Alison D’Angelo, a senior at Hingham High School said she is afraid friends will be able to view her posts from her freshman year at high school. She said she would consider deleting her Facebook if the changes are mandatory.

Ashley Henriksen, also a senior at HHS, doesn’t want the changes and prefers the current format.

“It’s wicked confusing and I don’t like it,” Henriksen said.

The high school senior and her friends agreed that they would make sure to go through their Facebook and delete embarrassing posts from years ago that may show up when the Timeline appears on their profiles.

Currently people can see many of the past posts  by continually hitting "Older Posts,"  but the major difference is most people would not continue to scroll back years and years to see your past.  With the new timeline, viewers can see your posts from as far back as 2004, 2005,  and 2006 and so-on with one click of the mouse.

Junior Caroline Lally and sophomore Joe Spaziani have not made the changes to the timeline but they said the layout is very confusing and not as simple to navigate as the current format. They said if it wasn't mandatory, they would never change to it.

Sophomore Jamie Dellot said she has already made the changes and she regrets it. 

“I was curious to see what it was, and I don’t like it,” she said

One student in the high school parking lot named Will,who would not give his last name, was optimistic about the changes.

“People keep saying the same thing when Facebook changes; they don’t like it at first but then they quickly get used to it,” he said.

According to Boston.com, as of Jan. 31, Facebook  had told some users that they have seven days to clean up their profiles before "Timeline" gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.

For a close up of the new changes and how to clean up your profile, read the story on Boston.com.