By Robin Carol
College students have long worried about potential employers snooping through their Facebook.com pages. But more and more, there's another set of culprits that might be taking a peek: mom and dad.
Since Facebook opened its doors (or more accurately, its online network) to non-student members, the undergraduate's favorite procrastination tool has become popular with the over-40 set. This has created new dilemmas for families, such as whether to accept a friend request from a parent or child.
Macalester College senior Nate Wilson-Traisman said he initially balked at the idea of communicating with his father on a social networking Web site.
"I was just really anti-people-not-from-our-generation having Facebook," he said. "The same thing happened when my sister got Facebook. I was biased towards college students, and that's mostly who I interact with and who it was originally for."
Wilson-Traisman eventually came around and added his dad as a friend.
"I felt kind of bad. Lots of my friends and my sister were friends with him. I figured he'd enjoy looking at my pictures and I kind of realized it was just harmless that he has one," he said.
The idea of opening their online profiles to the scrutiny of their parents has been met with mixed reactions by college students as well as parents.
Facebook user Sheri Seidmon has a son attending the University of Colorado at Boulder and another son in high school, but said she has stayed away from viewing their profiles altogether.
"It's partly because they don't want me to be their friend, and also I don't want to either because I feel like it's too nosy into everything they're doing," Seidmon said. "I just feel like that way they don't have to be worried about what they put on there that I might see."
Tufts junior Alyza DelPan-Monley has avoided that problem by utilizing Facebook's updated privacy settings to control what her parent has access to.
"I've restricted [my dad] from pretty much everything except maybe my profile pictures --no wall, no status updates, no anything," she said.
Portland State University junior Beryl Bessemer had the opposite reaction to her parents' new tech savvy. After her dad joined Facebook, she helped her mom make a page. She then added both of them as friends.
"Personally I don't really mind overall. I'm pretty open with my parents," Bessemer said. "I guess if I were somebody else and I had 100 photos of me beer-ponging and them being able to see that, it would be a little uncomfortable. But everything I put up for the most part is OK for the world to see."
Bessemer's father, Paul, argued that Facebook has not changed parent-child relationships so much as it has provided another arena for communication.
"If your kid has a bad relationship with you, they probably won't friend you on Facebook," Paul Bessemer said. "Facebook is so weird and exhibitionist anyway. It's just another way [for parents] to get access and learn what their kids are doing. Parents love embarrassing their kids even without Facebook."
And embarrass them they do. Perhaps the most obvious generational divide is the differing ways that students and parents use -- or overuse -- the ubiquitous networking site.
"My dad uses the status feature in a way that just kind of annoys me," Wilson-Traisman said. "He's always on my news feed. My friend had a status about mice in her house, and my dad commented with all these suggestions on how to catch the mice."
These types of reactions are common as children critique their parents' Facebook etiquette.
"They write on each other's walls with full punctuation, with what should be saved for Christmas cards, and the 'read more' option is necessary because they [write] so much," Haverford College junior Eve Gleichman said.
Rolling their eyes at questions like, "What is a poke?" kids are still adjusting to an older generation contributing content to their news feeds.
"Nothing will kill Facebook like having your parent on it," Paul Bessemer said.
But there is a place for the shamed offspring to commiserate. The Web site Myparentsjoinedfacebook.com collects awkward parent Facebook blunders and posts them for others to view.
All jokes aside, Wilson-Traisman feels that by tapping into their children's social networks, some parents might find more than they bargained for.
"I don't think it's a problem so much with kids and their own parents, but I think parents are finding a lot about their children's friends that they otherwise wouldn't," he said. "They can just follow gossip through Facebook, and find out relationships and stuff they wouldn't think to ask about and that maybe their kids wouldn't tell. They can kind of snoop around."
But senior Sarah Philips does not feel that parenting will change much as a result of Facebook.
"I think the way you're friends with your parents on Facebook is an extension of the relationship you have with them in the first place," Philips said.
College students have long worried about potential employers snooping through their Facebook.com pages. But more and more, there's another set of culprits that might be taking a peek: mom and dad.
Since Facebook opened its doors (or more accurately, its online network) to non-student members, the undergraduate's favorite procrastination tool has become popular with the over-40 set. This has created new dilemmas for families, such as whether to accept a friend request from a parent or child.
Macalester College senior Nate Wilson-Traisman said he initially balked at the idea of communicating with his father on a social networking Web site.
"I was just really anti-people-not-from-our-generation having Facebook," he said. "The same thing happened when my sister got Facebook. I was biased towards college students, and that's mostly who I interact with and who it was originally for."
Wilson-Traisman eventually came around and added his dad as a friend.
"I felt kind of bad. Lots of my friends and my sister were friends with him. I figured he'd enjoy looking at my pictures and I kind of realized it was just harmless that he has one," he said.
The idea of opening their online profiles to the scrutiny of their parents has been met with mixed reactions by college students as well as parents.
Facebook user Sheri Seidmon has a son attending the University of Colorado at Boulder and another son in high school, but said she has stayed away from viewing their profiles altogether.
"It's partly because they don't want me to be their friend, and also I don't want to either because I feel like it's too nosy into everything they're doing," Seidmon said. "I just feel like that way they don't have to be worried about what they put on there that I might see."
Tufts junior Alyza DelPan-Monley has avoided that problem by utilizing Facebook's updated privacy settings to control what her parent has access to.
"I've restricted [my dad] from pretty much everything except maybe my profile pictures --no wall, no status updates, no anything," she said.
Portland State University junior Beryl Bessemer had the opposite reaction to her parents' new tech savvy. After her dad joined Facebook, she helped her mom make a page. She then added both of them as friends.
"Personally I don't really mind overall. I'm pretty open with my parents," Bessemer said. "I guess if I were somebody else and I had 100 photos of me beer-ponging and them being able to see that, it would be a little uncomfortable. But everything I put up for the most part is OK for the world to see."
Bessemer's father, Paul, argued that Facebook has not changed parent-child relationships so much as it has provided another arena for communication.
"If your kid has a bad relationship with you, they probably won't friend you on Facebook," Paul Bessemer said. "Facebook is so weird and exhibitionist anyway. It's just another way [for parents] to get access and learn what their kids are doing. Parents love embarrassing their kids even without Facebook."
And embarrass them they do. Perhaps the most obvious generational divide is the differing ways that students and parents use -- or overuse -- the ubiquitous networking site.
"My dad uses the status feature in a way that just kind of annoys me," Wilson-Traisman said. "He's always on my news feed. My friend had a status about mice in her house, and my dad commented with all these suggestions on how to catch the mice."
These types of reactions are common as children critique their parents' Facebook etiquette.
"They write on each other's walls with full punctuation, with what should be saved for Christmas cards, and the 'read more' option is necessary because they [write] so much," Haverford College junior Eve Gleichman said.
Rolling their eyes at questions like, "What is a poke?" kids are still adjusting to an older generation contributing content to their news feeds.
"Nothing will kill Facebook like having your parent on it," Paul Bessemer said.
But there is a place for the shamed offspring to commiserate. The Web site Myparentsjoinedfacebook.com collects awkward parent Facebook blunders and posts them for others to view.
All jokes aside, Wilson-Traisman feels that by tapping into their children's social networks, some parents might find more than they bargained for.
"I don't think it's a problem so much with kids and their own parents, but I think parents are finding a lot about their children's friends that they otherwise wouldn't," he said. "They can just follow gossip through Facebook, and find out relationships and stuff they wouldn't think to ask about and that maybe their kids wouldn't tell. They can kind of snoop around."
But senior Sarah Philips does not feel that parenting will change much as a result of Facebook.
"I think the way you're friends with your parents on Facebook is an extension of the relationship you have with them in the first place," Philips said.
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