Parents on Facebook, a recipe for humiliation

As a teenager, the most effective weapon in my parents? arsenal of humiliation was ?the Stealth? ? a haggard 1987 Pontiac Bonneville with an uneven coat of black spray paint whose lacquered finish gave the vehicle a dripping-wet look.

Not surprisingly, being dropped off at school in the Stealth, with its missing hubcaps and angular body resembling the infamous military spy plane, was rarely a clandestine affair, especially when my father lingered in the parking lot honking as I ducked behind cars in an attempt to hide.

Attending college on the other side of the country granted me a temporary reprieve from my family?s errant behavior. then Mark Zuckerberg decided to revolutionize the way human beings interact, sacrificing a generation of young people?s autonomy in the process (or something to that effect).

These days, baby boomers don?t need a beat-up clunker to humiliate their kids; they?ve got Facebook.

Take my mother, for example. Last week she left a series of obscure messages ? complete with misspellings ? on a family member?s page using hip-hop-inspired verbiage that left her kids wondering if her account had been hacked or we were witnessing the beginning stages of Alzheimer?s (not to mention when she began labeling things ?wack?).

Then there?s my uncle, a retired high school coach turned online matchmaker, who is arguably the family?s worst offender. He has a habit of ?friending? women on Facebook in hopes of introducing them to his single son and nephew before another economic downturn finds us back on his living-room couch eating microwave nachos and watching Slamball reruns on DVD, our prospects for procreation officially scuttled. each time I stop by his home he flips open his laptop, logs onto Facebook and demands that I guess his new friend?s age and relationship status before excitedly revealing photos of obese boyfriends.

?This guy has a hot girlfriend,? he twanged recently, gesturing toward a hulking galumph whose beady eyes were tucked beneath a bony eyebrow ridge straight out of the Paleolithic Era. ?How come you don?t??

And finally, there is Jim, a longtime family friend and retired public educator in his late 60s. An hour rarely passes without Jim?s using Facebook to illuminate some darkened corner of his psyche that nobody else wants to see. Inevitably, his posts fall within one of three categories:

1) Self-portraits: mostly of Jim and his wife displaying cloying matrimonial affection, including close-ups of their mouths pressed together or their pudgy fingers interlocked.

2) Innocuous musings: My favorite was a post last month: ?Wonder if Costco is giving out oatmeal snacks today??

3) Private innuendo: These are written to his wife, often while the couple is in the same room, such as this post on the Fourth of July: ?Lori?I?m laying in bed?come enjoy the fireworks with me?hehehe?

Considering Facebook was originally designed for college kids, you might say it?s prematurely graying.

Of the roughly 150 million Facebook users in the United States, about 28 million of them are older than 45, according to statistics from inside Facebook. At 10.5 million, the number of users between 55 and 64 is only 4 million users shy of the 13-17 age group, providing further evidence that the site is no longer the sole domain of young people.

As it turns out, I?m not the only ageist who tenses up each time I get email alerting me to the fact that someone born before LBJ?s presidency has commented on one of my posts or tagged me in a photo.

The site ?Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook? compiles Facebook faux pas of the parental variety. ?Family. Can?t Facebook with ?em, can?t unFriend ?em!? the homepage announces.

In one example, a Facebook user?s father joins the group ?Swingers in your area,? which is automatically posted to his public to see. In another, a mother named Cindy leaves the following message on her kid?s wall: ?The dentist called you are due for a cleaning.?

Harmless? Probably. Mortifying? Definitely.

MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com has 558 ?Likes? on Facebook. By comparison, the page ?I love that my parents are cool enough for Facebook? has garnered 16.

An AOL survey released last year found that 76 percent of parents with kids on Facebook have ?friended? their teens, but 29 percent of teenagers are ready to ?un-friend? their parents and are twice as likely to want to ?un-friend? Mom versus Dad.

It?s hardly surprising, said Linda Fogg, a Facebook expert who consults for the site and travels the country holding seminars that teach parents how to use Facebook.

?We are a technologically disabled generation,? the mother of eight Facebook users said. ?Some of us have been able to keep up with Facebook, but for the majority of us it just doesn?t come naturally.?

In her workshops, Fogg, who is the author of Facebook for Parents: answers to the top 25 questions, teaches her pupils the basics:

Don?t post baby photos of your kids.

Don?t tag them in photos without their permission.

Don?t post reprimanding messages on their wall.

and, most importantly, learn the difference between sending a private message and a public one.

a 90-minute session is all it takes for most parents to make drastic improvements, she said.

In the majority of cases, it?s not that young people don?t want to be friends with their parents on Facebook, she said, it?s that they?re terrified of being embarrassed by them. Often, she added, they have good reason to be.

?If we are adults and we can behave ourselves, the kids like having us there,? she said, noting that a parent/child online relationship should resemble their real-life relationship. ?It shows them we care. it can strengthen your bond, but there are boundaries.?

Fogg should know. Her 20-year-old daughter un-friended her after she was tagged in a photo somewhere she wasn?t supposed to be and Fogg confronted her. a fight ensued, and it took some time for Fogg?s daughter to trust that her mom wouldn?t be the Big Brother of her Facebook account. These days, she is a shadow on her kids? wall, intervening in private when necessary.

?They know how to post and tag photos and use the site more easily than their parents,? she said. ?But they don?t always have the wisdom to ask whether a photo is going to affect their college applications or what kind of digital footprint they?re leaving.?

Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster who teaches at Stanford University, said that digital footprint could put young people at risk for decades to come. He expects we?ll see a burgeoning industry in companies that erase your digital past, such as the website reputation .com, which sells ?online reputation management.? In the meantime, he said, parents should familiarize themselves with their kids? online activity.

?Middle-aged people are the digital homeless,? he said. ?Kids and retirees have the time to figure this technology out, but people in the middle have more important things to worry about, like bills and mortgages.?

It doesn?t help, he said, that Facebook?s formerly clean design has been compromised by games, quizzes and new programs that can turn off the average adult.

?After a while you get tired of being ?poked? and having virtual pies thrown in your face,? he said.

At this point, Saffo said, social media sites such as Facebook are in the midst of a familiar cycle. with the introduction of a popular new technology, society reinvents itself around that technology and social norms evolve. once that happens, technology, in turn, reinvents itself around society.

?Think about what the automobile did for teenage dating,? he said.

But this social restructuring, in which media such as Facebook alter the way parents and kids define behavioral norms, will take some time to figure out. Right now, he said, Facebook is still an ?untamed wild animal.?

Tags: Linda Fogg, Stanford University, technology forecaster, online matchmaker, Technology Internet, Mark Zuckerberg, United States

Source: http://chatterbridge.info/dating-for-boomers/parents-on-facebook-a-recipe-for-humiliation/

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