Mikolaj J. Piskorski, an associate professor at the Business School who studies the effects of social media on everyday life, agrees, adding that photos and status updates help individuals stay in touch.

“Facebook gives people a platform to reconnect with other people,” he said. “People are apt at using the information that they have gathered on Facebook to start conversations.”

Research also has shown that platforms like Facebook have allowed for people to meet who might not have met otherwise, Piskorski said.

“We know that 20 percent of the new marriages in this country originate online,” Piskorski said. “About 50 percent come from dating sites, such as Match.com, and the other 50 percent come from sites like Facebook. Facebook has made a huge impact on how we meet people, both friends and romantic relationships.”

BREADTH OVER DEPTH?

At the same time, both academics and observers of student life at Harvard worry about the impact of Facebook on the depth and nature of student connections on campus. Many argue that students use Facebook for reasons other than expanding interpersonal relationships, leading to isolation, distraction, and inauthenticity on a platform that seems to encourage quantity over quality of relationships.

According to Piskorski, looking at photos and profiles of other people constitutes about 80 percent of the average individual’s Facebook activity.

And while Facebook has made it easier to not only access but also disseminate personal information, many feel that much of the information shared lacks depth, leading to more superficial relationships.

“I think what Facebook did was it enabled you to tell your friends and not-so-close friends more trivial things,” Palfrey said.

Ranen said that he has noticed that students often do not use Facebook as a means to connect with their immediate circle of friends.

Students can also use Facebook to present a disingenuous portrait of their lives to students who already feel inadequate, Dingman said.

“There’s another aspect of Facebook that I hear from freshmen that I think is very concerning, and that is that you’re more aware of the activities of a broader group of people regularly,” he said. “[Students] don’t usually post that ‘I’m having a miserable day and I got a B- in my Ec10 midterm and I have no plans for tonight.’ They’re more inclined to post something that they’re right out in the mix having a jolly time, and that means the person viewing is left feeling like, ‘Am I the only one without a robust plan?’”

Furthermore, administrators like Dingman worry about the consequences of Facebook and technology use more generally. What’s meant to create new connections oftentimes leads to isolation and alienation, said Dingman, describing a situation in which he witnessed every person in a room on their cell phones avoiding communication with one another.

Palfrey said that he feels that Facebook can fuel student procrastination, mentioning that current workshops on campus offer strategies for combating the incessant distraction of Facebook and other social media alternatives.

“I think pretty rapidly Facebook became a competitor to work as opposed to a tool for work,” he said.

Despite these caveats, all of the Harvard affiliates interviewed for this story agreed that Facebook’s impact, while perhaps mixed in its benefits, has been a powerful one.

“It’s a phase. It’s a significant phase,” said Palfrey, adding that “I certainly don’t think it’s the destruction of society or education or Harvard or whatever.”

“I think there’s no rolling it back,” Dingman said. “It is here to stay.”

—Staff writer John P. Finnegan can be reached at finnegan@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @finneganspake.

—Staff writer Jill E. Steinman can be reached at jill.steinman@thecrimson.com.