New Facebook Feature Shows Who Has Denied Your Friend Request

Remember that cute girl from your physics class you sent a friend request to a few weeks ago? Maybe you’d forgotten after you didn’t get a notification saying your friend request was accepted. If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.

Fortunately, Facebook announced on Thursday, April 12 that with its new “Download Your Information” option, you can see a list of all of the friend requests you’ve ever sent (theatlanticwire.com), letting you know exactly who has declined your requests.

The “Download Your Information” feature has been available on Facebook since October 2010, but, until now, it only enabled users to download information on their photos and videos, posts, messages, events, friend lists and chats. As this new feature becomes available, you will also be able to get your previous names, friend requests and the IP address of every computer you’ve ever logged into Facebook from (mashable.com). Knowing these IP addresses could potentially help hackers. Let’s say you were to log into Facebook from a friend’s computer. Afterwards, you could download your information from Facebook and retrieve their IP address, which would be extremely useful to a hacker. Facebook’s privacy page (http://www.facebook.com/fbprivacy) explains that this new feature (where you can download your previous names, friend requests and IP addresses) “will be rolling out gradually to all users and more categories of information will be available for download in the future.” Availability will be pushed to everyone over the next few weeks, but some of you could already have access today. At this point, Facebook has not announced the reasoning behind this new development.

So, if you’re eager for a play-by-play recap of your rejection history, keep checking your account settings for the new archive update. Let’s be honest, it’s not going to be interesting to go through your past friend requests and see who’s accepted you. This friend request history is clearly going to be used for seeing who’s decided that you’re not worthy of having access to their profile.

I’m not sure what made Facebook think this was a good idea. Nothing good can come out of this. I honestly couldn’t care less about who’s rejected my requests– it’s just Facebook, but I know many people will feel upset.

Rob Waugh of Daily Mail writes that a study of 77 university-age students found that a denied friend request “hurts just as much as real-life rejection.” Waugh quotes professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Penn State Joshua Smyth saying, “[O]ur studies show that people may experience similar psychological reactions to online exclusion as they do with face-to-face exclusion.”

Facebook, by making everyone’s rejection information easily accessible, will be contributing to these online “snubs” that cause people to feel (as Smyth describes it) withdrawn and numb. Every student I’ve spoken to about the issue agrees that this disclosure is disadvantageous.
“That’s a terrible idea,” said freshman exercise science major Jake Lupica. “It’s gonna make or break friendships– whether or not you accept or decline.”

“Why would anyone want to [see who rejected them]?” asks marine biology major and freshman Matthew Lyon.

It’s also bad for the people who did the rejecting. If you know that someone can see you’ve rejected them, it might make it more difficult to decline without feeling bad.
“People don’t have to know when you deny their friend request. [Making it known] is forcing people to say yes,” says Lupica.

I’d like the freedom to deny anyone I want and let them think I didn’t see their friend request.

With cyberbullying being such a problem nowadays, Facebook is just creating a new way for users to have their self-esteem lowered. There are already enough bullies online making people feel like shit, and Facebook doesn’t need to help them out.

Annabella Palopoli can be reached at annabella.palopoli@spartans.ut.edu.