You no longer have to worry about your best friend documenting your 21st birthday power hour online — Facebook will now let you choose if friends can link your name to a photo before its cyberspace debut.

Previously, friends could “tag,” or add your name and link to a photo of you on Facebook without your consent or knowledge. You could “untag,” or remove it, but only later after people may have seen the undesired photos.

Now, all Facebook users can choose to pre-approve tagged photos before they are circulated.

Regina Deil-Amen, an associate professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the UA, researched how social media can help different higher education student populations succeed, and how colleges can use social media for different purposes. She said the more professional people are with their social media, the more useful it can be for their lives.

Deil-Amen explained her research showed that networking and who you know “really makes a difference.” Social media, she said, can provide you with a wider network, more professional contacts and be used for purposes other than “pure entertainment.”

“The people you interact with now could be future colleagues,” she said. “You don’t want your reputation to be in jeopardy by the way you’re using social media technology.”

The new Facebook privacy feature will not affect whether or not friends can put a photo of you online, just if there is a name or a “tag” attached to it with a link to your page. Pre-approving a photo tag was the most requested change to Facebook by users, according to Kate O’Neill, product manager for Facebook.

Several students are pleased with the pre-approval setting because it means they have better control of what they share with people on the Internet.

Caroline Bickley, a pre-business freshman, called the new feature a “really good idea” because she said some of her peers have lost their scholarships due to inappropriate images on their Facebook pages.

“I don’t want to lose my scholarship,” she said. “I’ve heard that jobs and internships almost always look at people’s Facebooks too.”

John Nametz, the director of student financial aid, said he had never heard of a student putting their financial aid status in jeopardy as a result of their social media activity.

“No one in my office searches people on Facebook,” Nametz said.

Tori Boldt, a pre-nursing freshman, said that she constantly has to “untag” embarrassing photos posted by friends and “really likes” the new feature.

Other students like Robert Castero, an engineering freshman, said that although he keeps his page private in order to keep individuals from seeing information about him, he is a fan of the new setting.

“I like the feature, it gives more contr by others. It will also give the option of pre-approving what others tag in one’s own photos and posts.