Technically National Unfriend Day is not something official, but when a celebrity with his own talk show, who was once on a popular Los Angeles radio station, and is known by face and name, the likes of Jimmy Kimmel can make anything happen.
(Just give it some time before this occasion gets posted on Wikipedia)
For example, he can get the California (soon-out-of-office) State Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to (humorously) be part of the Unfriend Day occasion:
How would this occasion be applied to educators?
I suggest to take this time to discuss social networking and the pro and cons of "friending" and "unfriending" people online. This would also be a great opportunity to discuss with your students how we do this outside the social networking world and how that effects people in our society.
Discuss the meaning of friendship and what it means in person and what it means online. For example, my nephew accepted the "friend request" from someone who says is annoying at his school. He explained to me that although this kid is annoying at school, the kid is not harmful and does not disrespect his peers. For those reasons, he accepted the classmate's request.
Address the benefits of social networking, and how people abuse it causing people to "unfriend" others.
Some people get offended when others "delete" people from their social networking profiles. Perhaps create activities of how this would reflect the person who did the deleting and the person who was deleted.
There is so much to cover regarding social networking, and as the internet grows and network connections expands, considering "unfriend" Day. As stated in this CNN.com article:
"Facebook was once the social networking site we chose over MySpace to connect with our real friends; but over the years, many of us have accumulated dozens, if not hundreds, of Facebook friends that are, in fact, not actually our friends."
Something to think about.
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