abcd:
One of the promising things about the younger generations is that because they were raised with this technology, they are (or should be) also raised to use it cautiously and responsibly. When the internet first became semi-widely available in the home, many people were just thrown in to it, with little-to-no words of caution or hazard. There is a greater level of maturity with teens using the internet these days than we’ve previously seen. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a ton of work left to be done, but teens taught to use social networking properly should not have the problems that you described.
And as David Bar-Magen stated, facebook really is not a place to connect with strangers. By its nature, it just isn’t very conducive to it. Unfortunately, it is more so than it used to be when only affiliates of academic institutions could join, but nonetheless prowling for new friends is typically left to the shadier Myspace-type services.