One need look no further than the words of this Minnesota State University freshman to see the impact of something called Facebook, the online site that is state of the art of college socializing:

“I don’t know where I’d be without Facebook,” said Amanda Puckett. “I’d be so bored.”

That may be stretching it. Take one look at her Facebook page and you’ll see she has plenty to keep her busy. But her point is well taken, and its spirit is undeniable.

It is almost its own world. A world full of information and scandal and, most of all, faces.

Faces of young women. Faces of young men. Faces of college guys having just vomited in house-party trash cans, faces of girls mugging it up for the camera, making out for the camera, posing seductively.

But unless you’re already in, or already know about it, chances are you’ll never get in. Facebook is the online phenomenon — where friends are made, personal information is shared and party photos are posted — that has become the center of the social scene at many colleges and universities, including Minnesota State, Gustavus Adolphus College and Bethany Lutheran College.

Pair that with the meteoric rise of the Internet site MySpace.com, and the host of other online sites that cater to the average

young person’s tendency to kill time via the Internet, and one thing is crystal clear: Whatever rules you thought governed the social structure of youth are very much obsolete.

Face time

How popular is Facebook? Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes says there are 9,536 students signed up for the MSU Facebook site, nearly 70 percent of the university’s student body of 14,000. The numbers at in St. Peter at Gustavus are, proportionately, even more staggering. They boast 2,700 students, yet there are 3,137 Gustie members of Facebook. Astonishingly, 94 percent of this year’s incoming freshmen at the University of North Carolina signed up.

The Free Press, using a student’s account, took a spin through Facebook and found that of the several dozen student names we plugged in, only a few didn’t have Facebook pages. That informal survey included well-known athletes, student leaders, student rebels and randomly selected names from the student directory.

But don’t try getting in. You need to register with a valid college e-mail address.

MySpace.com is even bigger. In terms of sheer numbers, its 54 million dwarfs Facebook’s 12 million. But there are no restrictions at MySpace.com. Anyone with an Internet connection and some free time can set up their own MySpace account and start meeting people all over the world.

Originally started as a place for independent musicians to post their music, it since has exploded into the world’s largest free-for-all social scene, and there really aren’t any rules. Just like Facebook, MySpace allows you to post information and photos about yourself, engage in online discussion groups, send instant messages, etc. Most college students say, however, they typically ditch their MySpace account once they can get in to Facebook.

Beyond the two big ones, there are a host of other risqué Web sites — which cater almost exclusively to male hormones — that merely offer content, and this content ain’t for kids. Collegedowntime.com is popular, as is KillMyDay.com and Kontraband.com.

Why?

Without being a member of the Millenial Generation — ages 18-24 — something such as Facebook may be difficult to understand. Certainly, there’s nothing new or unique about human interaction and the desire to meet new people and mingle with the opposite sex and occasionally partake of an alcoholic beverage. But the degree to which students are loyal to Facebook borders on the odd.

“Every time I go to do homework,” says Corie Korin, a freshman from Princeton. “I go, ‘I wonder if anyone has e-mailed me’ (through Facebook), even though I know nobody has.”

Adds Puckett, “That’s the bad part of Facebook. Sometimes you don’t really get your school work done.”

For Amy Wodicka, a 4.0 freshman from White Bear Lake, Facebook is about meeting new people and keeping in touch with old.

“You can go through and it’s interesting to see how people you used to know have changed,” she said.

Hughes says that unlike on MySpace, Facebook users’ profiles are available to a few thousand people who already share in that person’s “real-world” community. Because users must have a college e-mail address, he says, no one is ever anonymous. Each page can be traced back to a real person, and that creates accountability.

“Users can choose exactly who they want to see their profile, whether it just be their friends, friends of friends, only students or various other combination of users,” Hughes said. “At the end of the day we’re interested in giving as much control to our users as possible.”

Other uses

The list of who else uses Facebook is a growing one.

• Last fall, North Carolina State University disciplined several students for underage drinking after a resident assistant found party photos of them on Facebook.

• A few days after students rushed the football field following a Penn State win over Ohio State, campus police found pictures of the incident containing identifiable students on Facebook.

• Northern Kentucky and the University of Kentucky both have disciplined students they’d seen drinking in pictures posted on Facebook.

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