<p>“S was told he must friend us and not restrict access.” - I never forced the issue when my kids wanted their privacy. I figured if I did they’d just start a different one for interaction with their friends. </p>
<p>If they chose to give me access, I’d agree to only read not post.</p>
<p>My D has me as her friend but I only see her photos and limited status updates, which I’m fine with. My S has me blocked in such a way that he’s “invisible” to me - so if we have a mutual friend and he posts a comment, I don’t even see that. But at any time, I can sit down with them and ask to see their wall, and when I have, it’s been as innocuous as can be, so I haven’t been worried.</p>
<p>DUH</p>
<p>My personal take on FB is that if someone wants to find me and keep up with my life and include me in theirs there are better ways. I do think that it is great for the kids and see mine keeping in touch with people they might not otherwise. So - not having FB means that the issue the OP is addressing will not come up, but I repeat - DUH!</p>
<p>I completely agree with starbright. Do you listen in on their phone conversations too? Would you censor their incoming and outgoing mail if there was no internet?</p>
<p>If you let them have internet access and a FB account leave them alone. I didn’t let my parents know everything I did and I probably don’t want to know all the gory details of my kids’ activities. In fact there’s a friend of a friend’s kid who offered to show me my kid’s FB pages. I’m considering letting my kids know so that they can decide whether or not to unfriend her!</p>
<p>I allowed my kids to have a FB page in high school, with the requirement that they allow me access. I think parents who think FB is no big deal in high school and ignore their kids’ activity are making a mistake. The internet world is important and can be risky and should be monitored for minors. </p>
<p>Being my kids’ FB friend has provided many teachable moments: Several of my sons’ classmates had posted profanity (the f-word) and questionably bullying type comments, which I was able to see immediately and teach my son about the inappropriateness of this. He now knows to delete these types of comments immediately and never does it himself. I was able to see some of my Ds’ high school classmates photos, which included pictures of them drinking alcohol and posing in unflattering positions (including giving the middle finger, and having simulated sex with boys), so I was able to counsel my Ds about those.</p>
<p>Like others before me, I never post anything on my kids’ walls, and have a policy that I will never friend anyone younger than me first. Interestingly, my nieces and nephews and many of my kids’ friends have friended me on their own, and I am flattered, but I never comment on their walls either because I am not confident that I won’t embarrass them by accident.</p>
<p>My kids communicate online almost solely through Facebook, rarely if ever reading their regular e-mail. Neither parent is, or they say would be, friended by them on Facebook. </p>
<p>I respect their need for some privacy withe thieir friends, but their unwillingness to communicate is not good at all, so our grounds rules are thus: </p>
<p>We do face-to-face talking first.
We will do phones if that isn’t possible.
We will do phone texting if that doesn’t work. </p>
<p>Since my HS kids don’t do email or parents on Facebook if the other methods dont work I will make any decisions regarding them unilaterally w/o their input or discussion. They know this and so far, no problems.</p>
<p>My son’s out of college and still won’t friend me. He says it’s because he uses some bad language. I do know that he has a limited number of friends and stringent privacy settings so he is protecting himself. He said he would think about redoing his page and maybe friend me some other time. Basically I’m only interested because it would be proof of his existence - when he doesn’t call or email. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>No kidding! The first thing I did today was hide the set of pictures that appeared - b&w from our childhood that my brother had tagged - and tagged myself in a couple of pictures that I approved. I really don’t want to be tagged!</p>
<p>We know and trust our kids and left it up to them. We’re already so much more tuned in to their lives than our parents were with us. I think a 16-year-old needs her own relationship with her friends without us watching. </p>
<p>We didn’t even ask when D1 was in high school, but my husband started joking with her about it when she was in college, because she had friended her aunts and uncles and a few of our friends, so why not us? She finally did friend us and was very funny about it, posting that it was conditional on us not posting anything embarrassing on her wall, and that it was a privilege, not a right.</p>
<p>D2 is a senior in HS and still hasn’t friended us, and I assume won’t until at least freshman year in college. That’s fine with me. She needs her space. I know she would never post inappropriate things, because she talks with great disdain about some of her stupid Facebook friends who do things like Photoshop-blur the drinks in their hands and think that then no one will know they were drinking. </p>
<p>My mother set up a Facebook page, and most of her large pack of adoring teenage and college-age grandkids happily friended her… but she started staying off it, because she was so uncomfortable seeing the things that one 14-year-old granddaughter was posting. Most of it is just normal young-teen-girl stuff, but there was some double-entendre things. Anyway, my H showed her how to block certain individuals, and now she’s back on. She just doesn’t want to know too much (and then worry) about the kids she loves but is not directly parenting!</p>
<p>Our kids do all peer communicating with Facebook, texting and cell phone, but they still check e-mail. They have to, because they both babysit, and D2 had a job that e-mailed schedules-- they know they need to pay attention to e-mail to work in an adult world.</p>
<p>researching,
You sound like a parent who is very aware. Your comments about inappropriate postings by other teenagers exemplify why most parents of teenagers should be monitoring their kids FB page.</p>
<p>The idea that it is a teenager’s privacy right to not share their FB page with parents is laughable. A teenager’s FB world is anything but private. Most of them have several hundred and even more than a thousand “friends.” Their friends can share anything your child has posted with unlimited others. As I’ve noted, some of the things I’ve seen posted are pretty offensive. </p>
<p>If your son held up a poster next to a freeway that read “Jimmy Doe is a ■■■,” or your 15-year-old daughter drove around with poster on her car of herself drinking a beer and giving the finger with her breasts bulging out of a plunging neckline, would you say “oh those things are part of Johnny and Suzie’s private life with their friends that I have no business intruding on?” There isn’t much difference between doing those things in public or posting the same on FB, imo, except that in public they will probably be seen by fewer people than on FB.</p>
<p>Both my son’s are “friends” with my brother and their grandmother - their choice. That tends to keep the bad-language or anything else inappropriate under control. But they didn’t want me to be their friend (altho I am friends with some of THEIR friends - go figure!).</p>
<p>But now that my older son is away at college - he agreed to let me be his friend on FB so that I would stop bugging him for band photos. I have no intention of commenting on his posts (other than an occasional “like”), but this way - I can keep up with him a little and he can keep up with what’s going on here at home. </p>
<p>Now I just need to work on the younger one! :)</p>
<p>@Bay, you said it much better than I could have and I completely agree with what you are saying. I think parents of young teens who do not monitor their kids Facebook activity would be shocked at the stuff on these kids’ pages. I have seen young teens, 14, 15, 16, post pictures of themselves with alcoholic beverages in their hands, people’s hands on their private parts and in very suggestive poses. I find it hard to believe that their parents would be ok with this. I also know of a young girl whose picture was stolen off of facebook and was found on a kiddie porn site. She was 15 and had posted a picture of herself in a suggestive pose, although she was fully clothed. In the photo on the porn site, she was not. Her face had been photoshopped onto a nude photo of someone else. Allowing young teens to use facebook unmonitored, because they need a private life, is short-sighted in my opinion. The internet is not their high school. Nothing that is posted on the web is private!</p>
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<p>I trust my kid to be on facebook. I don’t trust the rest of the world. It’s the cyber neighborhood. Anyone can say they are anyone.</p>
<p>I have access to my kid’s account. They can do what they want with that after they turn 18. (I believe I have a limited view of my oldest’s, which is fine), but not til then. I’m not going to say, “No facebook,” I’m going to teach them about the computer, the same way I taught them how to cross the street.</p>
<p>“Who is this person?” “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“Why did you allow them in your friend group?”</p>
<p>“They were freinds with some of my friends.”</p>
<p>“Nope. Here’s how this works…” </p>
<p>They need to be taught safe computer practices the same way they needed to be taught street smarts. IMO.</p>
<p>“S was told he must friend us and not restrict access. We never comment on his posts online but have talked to him IRL a couple of times about what we thought were inappropriate posts and asked him to remove them. It works for us. I get a glimpse into what is going on and he forgets we are there.”</p>
<p>This^</p>
<p>Bay, I don’t disagree that many kids post stupid things, and some parents would be well-advised to monitor their kids’ internet activity, especially with younger teens (12-16).</p>
<p>That said, it’s a case-by-case basis. It was not irresponsible of us to not monitor our children’s postings when they were that age. Through a combination of luck (i.e. they don’t seem to have the gene for big risk-taking), our style of parenting (treating them as responsible, thoughtful young people) and environment (their grade school was an exceptional place), they are mature for their age and have always had good relationships with adults and don’t view us as the enemy, but respect us. And we respect them. If they had pushed the envelope and were doing things like partying and staying out late and hanging around problem kids, I’m sure we would have reconsidered our hands-off-MySpace-and-then-Facebook policy. But we were lucky and have never had any of those issues. Of course, when they were younger we talked about issues of internet safety and responsibility, and we didn’t allow computers in their rooms until about age 15, and we never allowed TVs in their rooms.</p>
<p>I take issue with the presumed-guilty-until-proven-innocent thing. When my girls were pre-teens, I remember so many parents saying things like, “Just you wait”-- semi-bitter warnings about how bad things would get when our girls were full-on teenagers. I refused to accept that, and it didn’t happen. Grumpy? Sure. Messy rooms? Sure. But we never for a minute have had the slamming doors, sneaking around, yelling, etc etc that some parents insist is inevitable with all teen girls. </p>
<p>Now they they are turning 21 and 18, we’re past the alleged bad, irresponsible years, and you know what, they were great, and I will really miss the high school years. I know so many wonderful teenagers who are too smart to post trashy things on Facebook, and I’m happy to have trusted mine to be responsible. We never had to give them a curfew, we never had to take away privileges, and we never felt the need to monitor their posts. (Well, when D1 was a high school freshman and fell in with some wilder kids for a brief period, I will admit to a little spying/monitoring, because at least one of those girls was smoking pot-- but then my D distanced herself on her own from them.)</p>
<p>The sky is full of rotors!</p>
<p>"If your son held up a poster next to a freeway that read "Jimmy Doe is a ■■■ … There isn’t much difference between doing those things in public or posting the same on FB, imo, except that in public they will probably be seen by fewer people than on FB. "</p>
<p>Exactly - and FB is certainly not the only way they can be seen in cyberspace. So unless they are not allowed to use the internet at all, as poetgrl said, they need to learn computer smarts as well as street smarts. All that you can/should be doing in many aspects of their lives is to let them know your values, the dangers and have faith in them.</p>
<p>IMO, looking over their shoulders does more harm than good. It doesn’t give them a chance to learn for themselves. We’re not talking about letting a toddler venture out into the traffic on his own here, but about young adults that have to learn how to navigate the world, including the internet, without a leash on. They will be out of your domain quite soon - making decisions on their own, and, if you’re lucky, asking for advice, but not (again, if you’re lucky) asking you to make the decisions for them. Let them learn.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m more naive than most, but if I hadn’t seem some of the things posted by other teenagers on their and my kids’ FB page, it never would have crossed my mind that kids that age would do and say such things. I don’t think I would have had counseled them about it on my own, because I would not have thought of it.</p>
<p>One thing I don’t want is for my kids to be complicit in hurting others on FB by passively standing by when others post offensive things about other kids. Making my kids friend me seems a small price to pay to protect others.</p>
<p>I’m going to chime in and say that I find this to partially be a regional difference. I don’t know many kids in our current Southern area who aren’t friends with their parents. And their friends’ parents. And their youth minister. And once they go off to college, their old HS teachers. And their rec sports coaches. Etc. Etc.</p>
<p>And I know quite a lot of kids in our old Northeast area who refuse to friend any adult. Back off! Privacy, etc. Although my niece, nephew & a lot of my old Girl Scout troop members friended me. </p>
<p>I’m friends with both my kids not because I’m stalking them or because (at least now that they’re older) I need to “educate” them about how to be a good cyber citizen. It’s because we’re part of each others daily lives.</p>
<p>Kids who do not want parents able to snoop on FB have good reason to tighten up their FB security. Darn, I can’t see DS’s photos anymore… but strangers can’t either.</p>
<p>yes, Rob, that’s why we’re FB friends with our away-at-college girl. Our HS senior is still home and part of our daily lives, so I don’t feel the need to be her FB friend.</p>
<p>Long before our D1 would let us be her FB friend, she had become friends with my sisters and several of our adult friends. D2 is also friends with many adults. It’s not that they are walled off from prying adults, just that they need a little space from their parents. We’re already in her life enough!</p>
<p>Not only am I friends with DS on FB, most of his friends have friended me. I try to stay out of the teen drama, but I post opinions on political or local comments, and they do on mine. I have always let them know that if I am a “friend”, I will act just like any other friend. </p>
<p>Since I have been working with DS on the college prep stuff with his firneds, several of them have invited me to check out their profiles in order to clean it up. Most are horrified at what I was able to pull up on them. I am recommending that DS set up a separate profile before the apps start next year.</p>
<p>What a ridiculous headline for the story. The bigger news is that 62% of kids, THE MAJORITY, surveyed have accepted their parents requests or even ASKED their parent as my kids did. Why not sensationalize the story to appear that the norm is kids denying their parents when the reverse is actually true. </p>
<p>This is not a big deal for many, correction, most families.</p>