Friending Your Kids on Facebook

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 (No comments yet)

I just read an article online about how almost half of parents have “friended” their kids on Facebook.

many parents see the value in trying to "friend" their kids on social networks, even though it might be a bit awkward at times. According to Retrevo, most parents who are Facebook friends with their kids have teenagers—only 8 percent of parents said kids under 12 should have Facebook accounts in the first place—and they say that they learn a lot about their teens this way.

Original article here:

I agree that monitoring your child’s use of the Internet is very important and friending your kids is one way to do it. But like I just showed you, your kids can separate friends by group (real friends, school friends, my mom and dad) and then customize what your friends see by the group they’re in.

Everyone can see this, except Mom and Dad!

That means that your kids can post whatever they want and exclude you from it, just by adding you to a special group ("Outcasts", "Enemies", etc). For kids that are no longer living at home or have earned your trust when it comes to protecting themselves online, just friending them might be enough. Let them try to use the privacy controls to keep you out of things they don’t want you to share with you and then call them on mistakes. They’ll learn very quickly how to be careful about what they post and who can see it (a very valuable privacy skill).

But for younger kids or ones who just don’t “get it”, there’s a better way. Make use of these sites conditional based on you having their password to the account. Rather than being their friend, you can log in as them and see and control everything. In this scenario, you have the opportunity to discuss with them the things they say, do, and see in the system without them being able to restrict your visibility.

While they are quite sure to resent your presence, if you pick your battles and only get involved when you really need to (sexting, cyber bullying, weighing in on their “friends” selection, and helping them learn what information is too sensitive to post), you will likely be able to accomplish your goal of parenting without generating too much resentment.

A word of caution; this balance is very important! If you smother them too much, they’ll likely create a second account that you don’t know about and use it instead. Of course, finding out if your kids are posting online in places you don't know is a separate conversation entirely.

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