Any other adults having Facebook conflicts?

Parent Cafe
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<p>There is one person who asked to be my friend who didn’t use their real name. I do know who they are from looking at their list of friends. I kind of thought that’s rude. If I friend them they have access to my friends list, and my pictures of my family but they don’t want to use their real name? I will not friend anybody that I wouldn’t want knowing who my friends are and what my kids are up to. </p>

<p>I think it’s been great for keeping up with friends from all over the country and reconnecting with those I have lost touch with. I’m very glad I was talked into using it. It has really surprised me to see how many of my kids’ friends have been willing to friend us old people.</p>

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<p>I know one person who doesn’t use his real name. Actually smart if you don’t want annoying people from HS looking you up. His friends know who he is.</p>

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<p>If you don’t want people looking you up, you can have your settings so that nobody can find you. But if you want access to everything on my Facebook profile, then the least you can do is use your real name. A picture would be nice too. I wouldn’t even friend my sister until she used her real name and put a picture up.</p>

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<p>Why Facebook is great for old fogies:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I don’t have a picture of me up - just a picture of my hand holding a champagne cocktail :smiley: I do use my real name however, as the point of it is to get in contact with people.</p>

<p>One thing they could do with is a way to somehow include previous names, if one wanted to. Anyone looking for me (like anyone will be) from prior to 25 years ago would only know my maiden name or my first married name.</p>

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<p>You can add a former last name as your middle name.</p>

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<p>Didn’t think of that. But would I show up on my facebook that way - that would be sort of strange.</p>

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<p>Or you can add your maiden name in parentheses after your present name (there’s a button for adding an alternate name somewhere.) Since I don’t use it as my middle name, I didn’t want to put it up there that way.</p>

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<p>There is a way to enter an alternate name and many do that with their maiden names. My daughter ditched her last name (hyphenated) when she got married and has it as an alternate name.</p>

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<p>Can’t find that button. I will keep looking. I am just figuring all this out.</p>

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<p>There are good reasons why people don’t list their own names. I use my own. However, I have a friend who doesn’t. She has a perfectly valid reason not to do so. </p>

<p>Lots of people in LOTS of jobs–e.g., criminal court judges, correction officers,police, truant officers, prosecutors, debt collectors, social workers who have recommended that children be removed from their homes–do not want to be “found” by some people they interact with. They may use phony names, especially if they want to participate in “open” groups like those for people interested in stamp collecting, cooking or photography.</p>

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<p>Interesting point - I never thought of that. And I imagine there are people who have been caught in stalkerish situations who feel the same way. My daughter had an ex who sort of stalked her for a while so she has him blocked on facebook. But of course he could find her using another name if he were so inclined (not that it would do him any good as her setting is very private). Fortunately he seems to have finally gotten the message and given up.</p>

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<p>I set up my fb account many yrs ago, when you had to use an .edu email address. I dont go on all that often, and I have my security settings pretty tight, but I do find that I can sometimes catch my s on line when he is at school and have a quick chat with him (he doesnt like to use AIM). My kids have me on restricted access b/c they dont want me to read their stuff (understandibly). It lets me see basic info and it allowed me to see whose wall he’d posted on. I clicked on is gf’s name, and apparently she had her stuff pretty unsecured, as it showed me that she’d changed her relationship status. That’s how I found out they’d broken up. Awkward.</p>

<p>Older s had to not put up that he was coming into town as it was a surprise for me for mother’s day, and he didnt want me to see it. Kids hate that adults are now on FB. One of the groups I belonged to is called “my kids hate that I am on facebook”, but someone I hever heard of tried to friend me so I unjoined that group.</p>

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<p>When I told my ds about my recent debacle he said, “Man! There are a lot of parents on Facebook!” I didn’t try to friend him when I joined because to be honest I don’t think I’d be able to resist looking at his page incessantly when he’s away, but also because it was more about me being connected to my friends.</p>

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<p>Great thread. I love facebook. Just a couple of days ago, someone sent me a message on FB about an audition and a day later my daughter auditioned and got the part. Never would have found out about it otherwise. I find the whole thing fascinating.</p>

<p>I know I am going to want to do some FB friend weeding one of these days, but so far so good.</p>

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<p>I haven’t even told my kids I have a facebook. I do have friends whose kids have them as friends and also some of their kids friends have friended them. But we are talking mostly kids in their 20s and up so adults. My daughter has told me repeatedly (and rather annoyingly, to be perfectly honest, as I did not even have a facebook and at the time had no plans to have one) that she wouldn’t let me be a friend. I am a bit surprised to find myself with one but my brother in England has one so I got one to keep in touch more frequently with him and several geographically distant friends. I am really enjoying it so far and finding I am much more in touch with a few people (all live some distance away). Hey that’s how I found out my brother had the swine flu. And I posted pictures of our visit to Wimbledon which he has enjoyed seeing.</p>

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<p>Recently, I’ve noticed that some people think that their status update is a good place for a political rant. It’s not very pleasant especially as other people then respond with a rant of their own. FB status updates (according to my son and I defer FB etiquette expertise to him) is for updates about what you’re doing or experiencing or feeling.</p>

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<p>On the other hand, some of the status updates about feelings are a little unsettling too. Not sure how to deal with some of these announcements to the community about these intense feelings that a couple of my FB friends seem compelled to broadcast to their friends.</p>

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<p>I like to broadcast semi-intense feelings on occasion, so I decided to limit my friends list to people I wouldn’t mind reading them. I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything political on a status update although I’ve posted a political link or two, but that’s very rare. I might post a verse from the Bible, words from a religious song or something like that as my status from time to time. It’s what I’m thinking about and feeling, and I’m not going to censor that out because one of my friends might not share my religious convictions.</p>

<p>I am learning this facebook thing as I go. I got friended by a couple of people from high school with whom I had semi-remained in touch, so that was nice. But then, other h.s. people who I barely remembered started friending me. At first I would accept, feeling that it would be rude to do otherwise. But the number of friend requests escalated rapidly, so I stopped accepting them and de-friended anyone I did not really know fairly well.</p>

<p>One good thing that happened was I reconnected with my best friend in jr. high. I stopped speaking to her in h.s. because she was trying to steal my boyfriend. So when she popped up, I friended her and said, “hey, I know we weren’t exactly speaking at graduation, but it’s been 30 years, and I’d love to catch up.” So, we’ve gotten together several times and had some nice chats. At the first one she said, “So, why did we quit being friends?” I told her it was because she was trying to steal my b/f, and she swears she never had one bit of interest in him and never knew that’s why I was mad. I believe her. I was a jealous little twit, what can I say? In any case, neither of us want that guy anymore, so there’s no reason not to be friends!</p>

<p>To those of you who say you “almost never” do those quizzes, change it to “never”. I mean it! Everybody hates that. If you must take the quiz, then when it says “Publish” or “Skip”, choose “Skip”. Then, you get to see the results of your quiz, but all of your friends don’t have to see it.</p>

<p>I also learned to never ever ever accept a gift or a hug or a food fight or a Bible verse or ANYTHING. (Yes, I do feel guilty about the Bible verses.) :o If you accept something from one person and not another, then the second person will feel all rejected. If you never accept them, that will be obvious when they look at your profile. You don’t have to say anything, just click “ignore” every time.</p>

<p>Advice: don’t be a facebook stalker. I have 2-3 friends who will comment almost every time I post a status update. Don’t do that; it’s weird. It looks like you are a groupie, or something. RARELY comment on your kids’ status updates or post on their walls. It’s just like the annoying friends, only it’s your MOTHER! I know that some kids are fine with this, but most aren’t. </p>

<p>By the way, have you seen the new Verizon commercial? Mom and Dad are busily texting away on their phones and the kids are lecturing them, “Mom, just because I let you be my facebook friend does not mean you can be writing ‘I love you’ all over my wall!” “Dad, cool it with the twitter updates” Dad mutters under his breath while texting, “Sitting on the porch…” Pretty funny.</p>

<p>S says that parents also should never friend their kids’ friends. If those kids friend you, then fine, but you don’t initiate it.</p>

<p>Learn to love the “Hide” feature. If someone is posting updates way too often or taking tons of quizzes, posting tons of links, etc., just mouse over to the right of their name and a box will pop up that says “Hide”. You can hide the person or hide just that quiz (in case you have other friends who take it). When I have people I need to leave on the friend list but they post too much junk, I will just hide them. If they write on my wall, I’ll still see it, otherwise it’s out of sight, out of mind. </p>

<p>Someone sent me a link to a way to block all of the quizzes. I didn’t every try it, but if I find the link again, I’ll post it here.</p>

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<p>Wow, I did not know about this feature. I have a few “friends” who are not even people I know well, and they post several times a day things like “Woke Up”, “going to work”, “making dinner”, “going to bed” – things that I don’t even find interesting about my own life. My big question is this: do people get notified if you unfriend them? Someone I know once got a notice. I would like to pare my list at some point of people who I don’t know well and who never post or who post too often but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.</p>