When Matt Florian signed in to his Facebook account to check the status of his 400-plus friends, he had a friend request.
It was from his dad.
The junior at Sherwood High School in Montgomery County, US, didn’t panic. He simply took a deep breath and pondered his options.
He could accept it or ignore it. He could accept it and limit the parts of his profile his dad could see. He pondered more.What were the implications of “friending” your folks?
New-age dilemmas
Across the world, Facebook users are contemplating similar questions.
More and more mums and dads are signing in to Facebook to keep up with their offspring.
Not only are they friending (or attempting to friend) their sons and daughters, they’re friending their sons’ and daughters’ friends.
Some, like Matt, take the requests in stride. Others voice their dismay and decry parental intrusion and offer tips on how to screen out mum and dad. (“Just log on to their computers and delete their accounts.”)
Even parenting experts are getting involved, offering tips on Facebook etiquette.
“I do not know if this has happened to anybody, but this morning, I log on to my Facebook account and I have a new friend request!” wrote 19-year-old Mike Yeamans, a sophomore at James Madison University, the US, on one of several “No Parents on Facebook” groups that have popped up on the site.
“I click on the link. I could not believe what I saw. My father!”
When Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, it was designed as a way for college students to connect with each other.
Users created a personal page and were able to accept or send out friend requests.
The accepted friends were then able to keep tabs on people in their network, send messages and even connect with the friends of friends.
It was like a private club, since it was open only to those with certain e-mail addresses.
In 2005, Facebook allowed high school students to sign on.
But it was the 2006 decision to open it up to the public that drew howls from its original audience — and opened the door for parental invasion.
In protest, several “Abolish parents” groups have sprung up on the site.
Yeamans and a few of his friends started “What Happens in College Stays in College: Keep Parents Off Facebook!” in 2007. They were stunned when more than 500 people signed up.
One Facebook group even started an online petition to Facebook’s founder, begging him to reverse his decision.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Yeamans, who is a computer information systems major.
“I love my parents but there are some parts of my college experience that I want to keep to myself.”
At Sherwood High in Sandy Spring, US, students shared tales of parents let loose on Facebook.
There was the mother who now spent more time talking to her daughter’s friends than her daughter.
And then there was the parent who went on a “friending frenzy” — much to the dismay of her daughter.
Asked if they would accept a parent’s plea to friend them, the majority of students recoiled.
Except Matt.
Frank and fair
Matt’s dad, Bob Florian, swears he didn’t have anything nefarious in mind when he asked to friend Matt.
“I even told them it would be okay if he didn’t want to friend me,” he said.
But the elder Florian had a legitimate work excuse. He and his colleagues at Grassroots Enterprise, a community political-action network, use Facebook to get their clients’ messages out.
For several months prior to his “friend” request to his son, he had peppered his son and daughter with questions about how the website worked.
Today, the fastest-growing segment of Facebook’s estimated 66 million users are people 25 years of age and older.
More than half the site’s users are out of college. Whether that will have an impact on Facebook’s coolness quotient remains to be seen.
Unexpected support
For a generation accustomed to sharing everything online, it might seem odd that two more pairs of eyes would raise such concern.
But Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois, the US, who has studied digital culture extensively, said there’s a difference between the world and your parents.
“What they want to keep most private is not something they wish to keep from strangers, it’s the things they want to keep from people who know them,” he said.
For Taylor Janney, the choice to friend or not to friend her mum Karen, was not an option. It was the only way the 15-year-old was allowed to be online.
“My mum was my first friend,” she said with a laugh. “But it’s cool. I’m not embarrassed by her.”
Taylor’s mother, a teacher, said she has been surprised by how much amusement she has gotten from Facebook.
Early on, she made a rule that she wouldn’t friend any of her students but she found that some of them wanted to friend her.
Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, the US, and author of the book Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation said parents should be upfront about wanting to know what their children are doing but shouldn’t be upset if their friend request is ignored.
Many young people have come to think of Facebook as theirs and see parents as interlopers.
He recommended that parents and their children set up rules for mum and dads once they’re online.
“Maybe something along the line of parents not friending friends.”
Since his initial horror, Yeamans has modified his stance when it comes to parents on Facebook.
“I’ve come to terms with it,” he said. “They can join it but I won’t add them. There are some things I don’t want them to know.”
Still, just when parents think they’ve cracked the code, one note of caution: Being “on” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “in”.
Students say a little fiddling with the privacy controls and those pictures from Saturday night never existed.
