<p>You can just politely ignore the request. The relative doesn’t need to know how often you are on facebook, so if she asks, you can claim you rarely look at it and arent sure how much you will use it.</p>
<p>Go to your settings in the upper right hand corner and you can choose what information you want to make/not make available to whomever. My d is going thru a sad breakup with her bf of a few years from hs and is very careful not to let him or any of his friends/family see photos of her in a new relationship on fb. They will not even be aware that she has posted a new photo album according to her. It’s a way of defriending without being too obvious I guess.
jym626’s idea works too…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Love it. “I must have clicked on the wrong link.”</p>
<p>missy, if you do that post #23), you might want to set your settings so that people who aren’t your friends can’t see your friends list. That way, your relative can’t see who you have friended.</p>
<p>here’s what I would do: Don’t friend her. Then add her name to the list of people who can never find you on Facebook (and add anyone else there who you don’t want to friend). If she asks, tell her you deleted your account. Of course, that’s lying, and if you don’t want to lie, then I’d do what OperaDad suggests.</p>
<p>(One of my daughter’s HS friends blocked several kids from seeing her profile – it was as if she dropped off FB entirely. But my daughter could still see her profile, and told the other kids that. It was a source of amusement.)</p>
<p>Not to hijack your thread, but my daughter recently started using Twitter, and decided to tell me about it. That is opening a whole other can of worms. Oy.</p>
<p>Edited to add: I don’t know why my last paragraph about Twitter was just inserted at the top of this post, but I can’t delete it. Very strange.</p>
<p>I finally gave in and let my youngest have a Facebook page when they started with privacy settings. At that time I joined kind of anonymously ( no profile, photo, wall etc.) - the deal with my teenagers was that parents had the right to access if they wanted an account. I rarely “checked” but the kids knew I could. I did not, however, use my page to keep in touch with or friend others. Recently, my S “friended” some of the relatives and gave them my contact info. Since I’m never on there, I really had no idea that they tried to “friend” me. It was easy enough to tell S to tell them that I’m not on Facebook that way, ie I only use to be able to see my kids’ photos, etc.</p>
<p>Someone I asked to befriend on FB, just wrote back to me and chatted for awhile, very friendly and all…then only later I realized they never let me be their friend! Even now I am not sure what happened, and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt they made a mistake but who knows. But hey you might try it with your relatives. Send them a message, saying 'Hey, isn’t facebook cool!? Great to see on you here" and then hit the ignore button. :)</p>
<p>I have been on for a couple of months. I mostly have old friends from high school. I was faced with this dilemma and caved, It was a request from a weird cousin that I haven’t seen for so many years, I can’t even recall. I just felt so bad because when we were really little, she was the kid at school that everyone picked on. She was a couple of years older than me and when I was asked if I was related to her ( same last name ) I denied it. Granted, I was six at the time but I still feel bad.
Don’t you know someone made a remark on my wall about her , which I deleted as soon as I saw it.
My sister was mad at me for going weak and accepting her because she chose to ignore her request…now I know I can back out, but I think she would notice since she still doesn’t have many friends :(</p>
<p>Well, you know I can relate with the ‘keep-them-at-a-distance’ relatives. The timing of this thread is great as I’m trying to figure some people out. The mother of one of D1’s best friends in middle school just friended D2 last night. It won’t take long for her to figure out I’m one of D2’s friends, so I expect the friend request any day now. Am not sure I want to be friends with her. If I list her as someone I do not want to see me on facebook, will she still be able to see that I’m actually on facebook through D2’s website?</p>
<p>I also got a message through facebook a couple of days ago from someone who used to be a very good friend, and we had a falling out. It was nice (didn’t refer to the falling out) and I responded nicely. Now I’m wondering if this is some way to feel people out to see if they’ll be your friend, without coming out and asking directly. I would accept her as a friend if she asked, but maybe she was putting the ball in my court, and I didn’t respond. Hmmm… will have to think about that one.</p>
<p>Missypie - I am on facebook, but h is not. My first and last name are both fairly common and there are undoubtedly quite a few people with my name on there. My profile picture happens to have a picture of both me and h in it. A cousin of h’s – whom we don’t care for – emailed (not sure if it was a friend request or a message) and said, “Hey, is that guy in the picture [h’s name]?” since he was presumably trying to ascertain that I was the “right” person with my name. I just hit ignore. </p>
<p>Don’t sweat it. I also ignore a lot of apps / requests that my friends send me (“here, have a milkshake! a piece of flair! name 37 things about yourself!”) because I just don’t want more stuff cluttering up my computer.
I think that when you’re over teenage-age, you can claim “still not sure how to work that facebook thing” and you’re ok! </p>
<p>My question is - I saw my old boyfriend on there (he’s now happily married, blah blah blah) and wanted to friend him. However, he only had one friend on there (his sister) which suggests that he’s not yet into facebook. If he had a couple dozen friends, I’d think he was kind of come-one-come-all and wouldn’t hesitate to friend him - but does that seem weird, if he really isn’t into facebook, to friend him? WWCCD? (what would college confidential do)</p>
<p>Just ignore it like you never saw it. If she asks you about it later, just say something like you’re not on FB a lot, and haven’t gotten around to looking at your list of potential friends. If you friend and then defriend them, more than likely your name will pop up in their list of suggested friends, and they’ll realize you defended them.</p>
<p>I’ve ignored friend requests, but not from relatives, just from people who I cannot-for-the-life-of-me remember, although they apparently went to my hs or college. In one case, I de-friended the brother of a close friend, because I never even spoke to him in hs and he kept sending me “gifts” etc (I’m sure he sent them to all his friends.). Then he friend requested me again a few weeks later! I reluctantly accepted, but I’m thinking of de-friending him and blocking him. </p>
<p>There’s a handy option on your news feed, in the upper right of each bit of news you get, that gives you the option to get “more news” or “less news” about each person. I’ve "less news"ed a lot of people… </p>
<p>It’s sticky when it’s a relative though. New-fangled technology, and our etiquette rules have yet to catch up! Perhaps accepting but limiting what she can see (using your privacy settings) is a good idea.</p>
<p>well, my dreaded request I mentioned in post 28 came in today.</p>
<p>Will sit a couple of days on it before deciding.</p>
<p>As I always say, just because someone asks doesnt mean they automatically get what they want. You can do a few things, teriwtt-- either ignore her request to friend you, or put her on a very limited access to your facebook. There are lots of security settings, and you can limit what she sees. But if you really dont want to friend her, just ignore her request. Sometimes people forget who they asked to “friend” if they dont get a response. She might just forget. If you dont want to friend her, then you shouldnt feel compelled to. JMO.</p>
<p>My husband does not have a facebook account , but yesterday he got an email with a request from a name that he not only didn’t recognize , but didn’t appear on facebook when we tried to look it up.
Two pictures came up, one was his sister in law ( who is on my friend list ) and the other his ex-wife ( in no way to be considered a friend )
I don’t know what that was about at all. Either way, he wants nothing to do with facebook.</p>
<p>I’d just ignore the request. When I send a friend request to someone I just forget about it, figuring they can accept if they want–or not.</p>
<p>Life is too complicated already to lose any sleep over facebook!</p>
<p>This is a great article on how to keep things private from any people you may want to. Don’t know if you’ll be able to see it without a fb account tho.</p>
<p>[Leaving</a> Facebook… | Facebook](<a href=“http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=65539735718&h=XtqiT&u=bzUOh]Leaving”>http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=65539735718&h=XtqiT&u=bzUOh)</p>
<p>This is a timely topic because I just joined facebook–and loved it for about three days as I reconnected with a few old friends–then hated it three days later when an old ex-friend popped up and started annoying the bejesus out of me. I said to my son, “Facebook is a great way to find people you’ve lost touch with, and then you can remember why you didn’t mind losing touch in the first place.” :)</p>
<p>Terrific article melsmom! The article touched on a number of things I had missed . Thank you!</p>
<p>Don’t forget our CC Parents Facebook group if you are interested. Send me a PM or, if you know my name, find me on facebook!</p>
<p>How active is that group, MOWC? Do you / what do you discuss?</p>