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In Your Facebook!
A very strange phenomenon has occurred over the past couple of months. Parents have invaded Facebook!
Facebook has long been the social networking choice for high school, college and recently graduated kids. Parents have debated the dangers and merits of Facebook. Believe me, I have been in some LONG debates on this subject. I took the position that as long as my daughter’s page was private, I had my daughter’s password and I could occasionally check to see what was going on, what hours she was on and with whom she was networking, I was OK with her having a Facebook page. After receiving an invitation to join Facebook from an acquaintance in Florida, I took the plunge and now I am a full-fledged, status-updating, photo-posting member of Facebook!
One of the readers of TriangleMom2Mom found me on Facebook and after several exchanges, we are going to meet for lunch next week. My husband got his own Facebook page which is REALLY shocking since he’s not exactly on the cutting edge of technology. He has been contacted by friends from high school and even elementary school and is having a blast with it. He even keeps in touch with our daughter on Facebook when he is traveling.
We are Facebook friends with our daughter and with several of her friends. I know parents are concerned about what goes on in Facebook, but so far I haven’t seen anything more scary than the long phone conversations we used to have, stretching the phone cord and flipping it around our hands 30 years ago. (Yes children, we used to have to be physically connected with a wall in order to talk!)
Here are some of the controversial things I’ve read from our collective kids:
Blank is ready for Friday
Blank is learning to play the harmonica on YouTube
Blank is taking a shower
Blank is finally studying for her chemistry test since it took like six hours to find a good version of her song.
Blank is laughing at Miss Di trying to teach her Mom about Facebook
So my advice, my parental friends, is to take the if-you-can’t-beat-‘em (and you can’t), join-‘em attitude. Jump right in there and see what it’s all about. And my prediction is that pretty soon we are going to see a mass exodus of teens from Facebook as they realize, “Eeeuuuw! Our parents think this is cool. We are SO out of here!”
Di appears Saturdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di on her blog Live and Let Di.
Live and Let Di
Diane is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
I try to be the voice of Moms with teens. My daughter Haley is 16. She's at that age where she is convinced that I know nothing. I'm thinking I'll seem a lot smarter when she's 22. We bond over Broadway shows. My son Rory is 13. He started reading the sports page when he was 5 and his passion for anything sports-related has grown ever since. This year he beat out 9 guys in their 40s to win his Fantasy Football League. Watch for him on ESPN in a few years.
My husband Hurley works from home, but travels quite a bit. When he's gone, I usually take a break from making dinner and cleaning the house. Oh, I don't do those things regularly when he's here either! Our parenting philosophy is "choose your battles." The only problem is that we often choose different battles. It keeps it interesting!!!
Comments
What's all this "facebook" business? I'll have to check it out sometime:-)
You left out "Blank is practicing her song!"
That was a big turning point in Facebook history.
Ah yes...when "Blank is practicing her song" appeared on Facebook, the Fuquay High Facebook world went crazy. Blank doesn't sing!!! She can do a mean round-off back-handspring back-tuck, but sing?
I just joined yesterday. I felt I had to, as I was getting "invites" etc. and couldn't respond to messages unless I joined. Too early to tell if I like it or if I can even maintain my page.
I'm having trouble uploading photos -- is there a trick?
I too have had the occasional difficulty with uploading pictures. I was wondering if it was a Mac thing. Are you using a Mac? But I think that Facebook is always under construction in the background and it can be glitchy. Keep trying. If all else fails, upload one at a time and see if that works.