I like Facebook a lot. I keep up with my friends all over the world, and the ones who live a couple blocks away. It’s quicker and often more frequently checked than e-mail.

Some users feel so safe and comfortable (on a gigantic worldwide public Web site, no less) that they feel entitled to write whatever-they-damn-well-want-thank-you-very-much. Which is stupid.

Making your dislike for someone so irretrievably public is obnoxious. You don’t like Sally-Jane? Fine. But keep it to yourself — it’s not like all that many of us care anyway.

When school administrations get involved, things get tricky. Is it OK for students to write whatever they want about teachers on social-networking sites? Not a smart move, but freedom of speech does after all exist, right? Is it reasonable for administrators and faculty to be monitoring what students do outside of school? Maybe, but what about the right to privacy? So no, not really.

What we do with our life outside of schools is our business. Why do teachers care what we think and do?

As reported this week in New York magazine, Horace Mann, an elite private school in Riverdale, N.Y., recently found itself in this position. Some students formed a group where they wrote oh-so-nasty comments about teachers — one in particular — and, of course, some teachers found it.

However, they didn’t find it by logging on using their personal accounts.

“Logging on to MySpace proved too complicated, but then [a faculty member] recalled a faculty seminar he’d attended the previous spring, in which Adam Kenner, Horace Mann’s technology director, had demonstrated how to monitor student Facebook pages,” wrote reporter Gabriel Sherman. “All it took was a Horace Mann e-mail account, a false name, and a year of graduation.”

So, basically, the only reason Horace Mann authorities found this mean group was by cheating their way in. Which is almost as bad — if not just as bad — as writing those rude comments.

It comes down to whether it’s OK to track students’ “personal” conversations. I may be a little biased (being a student), but to me the obvious answer is NO. Not by trickery and deceit. If you use your real identity, we are much more likely to respect you.

Besides people have always gossiped, and it’s hardly ever kind. So why does it suddenly have to be monitored to death? Because it is more public? Yeah, well everything is more public. It’s 2008.

What’s the real concern? Hurt feelings or the public image of a private school? If someone was looking to find out about a school, whose word are they more likely to trust — some angsty 16-year-old or a Princeton Review critic? The answer is obvious.

And the world is changing. The Internet links us together and pulls us apart. It’s easy to use, but hard to control. So, when these things go public, doesn’t it look better to just grit your teeth and take it instead of retaliating by cheating your way into personal Web sites and then complaining about what you find?

Which is the greater crime — deception and trickery or simply acting your age?