Why do colleges bother to block sites like bebo/facebook, etc? It's so annoying.

Social networking sites are very distracting. When you’re using a “school” computer, you’re supposed to be using it for “school” purposes.

They block social web sites because they are paying for bandwidth. If all the bandwidth was used for social web sites additional bandwidth would cost the school money. Therefore increase the tuition, would you like to pay additional money for tuition?
Why don’t you have internet at your house? Is because it cost money?

There is usually a way around them. At my old university they controlled what web pages we could use, one of them being a newspaper search site. We jsut searched for google, then googled facebook hahaha man we were lame. Lame-o’s on facebook at uni mind you!

Hey when they start blocking Porn !!! I’ll help you picket the school !!

One thing is people will waste hours on the computers when other people need to use them to get actual school related stuff done. The computer lab in the library at my school only had about 100 computers for students to use. It would suck when you need one to print a paper out and most people were just messing around.

Oxford Uniersity has just blocked Spotify, because so many students were using it, their whole internet connection was in danger of going down..
Slightly different from Facebook etc, but as said before, computers in colleges are for students to WORK – i.e.spend time on research or the like to help them in their studies.

My college doesn’t block anytthing but I wish they would so people wouldn’t be facebooking at the library when I have actual homework to do :(

School now is like a corporate business. I know in my place of employment they block out all sorts of stuff that either drain bandwidth or is unrelated to anything that you would need. But I agree with the originator; I don’t understand how facebook and those sites could possibly harm someone’s ability to get good grades or is in anyway harmful to the network.

I think it’s one thing if the school is blocking the access on the lab machines, and a whole different concern if the school is blocking it across their network as a whole.

@johnpowell and @hug_of_war both pointed out that it’s generally beneficial to have sites like that blocked on the lab computers (to avoid folks tying them up for others), but if I’m using my laptop to access the school network, other than the bandwidth issues (which for a mid to large size school can be a problem if they didn’t plan their network accordingly)

Your college blocks Facebook? Weird. My college only blocks file sharing sites. As noted above, it’s mainly about not using expensive bandwidth for entertainment, but many colleges, like mine, recognize that students have to have some other outlets and that those who live on campus have no other internet access and allow the use of most kinds of websites, only blocking those that are considered a security issue, that raise legal concerns, or that eat up a lot of bandwidth (i.e. file sharing). You should form a student group to protest this issue and work with student government to get the policy changed. You’ll have the most luck if you can find examples of using blocked sites for research purposes or as organizational tools for student organizations (e.g. a Facebook group for the math club). You might also want to get some analytics on the use of social networking and the actual bandwidth consumed, as well as on sites that are just as entertainment oriented (or more so) that might not be blocked but might use greater bandwidth (e.g. hulu.com). Be careful there though, because you might just lose Hulu too.

@hug_of_war That can be a problem, but it’s pretty hard to block every non-work related use of a library or lab computer, and when the lab or library isn’t busy, there’s really no problem with using a lab or library computer for entertainment. I would envision a system in which if a student can’t find an available computer they push a button and every computer in the library shows a pop up that says: “There are students waiting to work on a computer, if you are using the computer for entertainment, would you please give up your computer for now so that another student can work?” I would expect that at least a few students would respond to that and move on. I would have.

If a school could actually block all non-work related websites (and honestly, how would they even define that, it’s impossible to know just how someone is using a site, even Facebook) then they would really just be reducing the access of poorer students. Students with money will have their own computers and get their own internet connections, but students without money will not have the same access to a variety of sites that, while not always work related, can enrich student life.

@LouLou Feel free to use any of these arguments in lobbying your administration to change the policy.

Those darned educators, interferring with your playtime!!!

@hug_of_war I also feel like there should be a few computers that can’t do anything but access the catalog and online journals. That would be easy to set up and cheap, since they can be old computers that wouldn’t be used otherwise. You could also potentially have some computers that weren’t connected to the internet just for using certain programs. My college had a set of computers that you had to stand to use, which were supposed to serve that catalog purpose, but I don’t think they quite did the job.

Oh, those annoying college adminstrators. Don’t they realize, for heaven’s sake, your family scrimped and saved to send you to college so they could brag to their friends about “My kid, the Friender”

@owl. That is completely not the point. I do my work like everyone else in college, but does that mean I shouldn’t be allowed to acces any social networking site when I have my work done??

@LouLou
I think you missed the points—-
1) College is not set-up for social networking on the web.
2) Schools go with the cheapest way to connect with the internet.
3) You should pay your on way.
4) Your use of the social networking sites MAY block someone else ACCESS to do their homework.

@Tropical_Willie
I’m sure you realise that it’s expensive to go to college, and it’s not something I could afford. Obviously if I was tying up a computer and someone had work to do, I would be only too happy to give them the computer. I think a solution could be a separate connection in a separate room where these things are not blocked for people who want to use the computers for something other than work. All I can say about the cost is, I am paying the college fees as it is, although I appreciate cost is something they have to consider.

@LouLou
Your still missing the point. You and twenty other people are NOT using the computer connections for social websites. It is not just YOU in the Rowboat of life.

@LouLou What @Tropical_Willie is talking about is less the tying up of a physical computer, but the total system bandwidth. Since only so much information can get down the wire at once, and since the internet itself (for now) does not prioritize that information, the solution is to block internet access that is not considered work or school related. Of course, I thought I gave a pretty rational argument for why he and others are wrong about that, but here’s another one:

Social networking is a comparatively tiny consumer of bandwidth. Most colleges (ok, I’m assuming the most based on my experience at my college which no one there who had been to other colleges seemed to think was at all unusual, but I could be wrong) do allow social networking to pass through their firewalls, and do not experience bandwidth problems because of it. The same may not be true of file sharing. Most colleges also recognize the importance of social development as part of the college experience, even if it has nothing to do with class work. They therefore provide architectural spaces (which also cost money) for just that purpose. It seems reasonable for them also to allow such spaces in the online world, especially since the cost is really negligible, particularly in comparison to the cost of providing physical spaces. But the end reason they should allow them is that there are too many sites of too many kinds that can “waste” bandwidth, and the cost of trying to keep up with all of them in the firewall will exceed the cost of bandwidth for most basic sites (again, file sharing may be the one real exception due to its very high bandwidth requirements and associated legal issues).

@Snarp Thanks for all your points. You have argued my case eloquently and more knowledgeably than I did. Lol.

Another point about this subject is that I couldn’t even access this question in college because it mentions the words Facebook and bebo. It came up as blocked. I don’t think it is a very well put together firewall.