Facebook Primer IIOld People Etiquette
With all the old people getting on facebook it is becoming more crowded and sometimes annoying. With the high school and college kids it was truly social but some evil people have decided social networking can be used for marketing and self promotion. Additionally adults are also all over seeing what their kids pages are like and seeing what their kids are doing and seeing what their friends are doing and what their saying and ...on and on.
Sooooo...your old. You are on facebook all the time because your new to it. It seems exciting and new even though it just bundles a lot of other technologies. It is fun looking at your friends pictures, their updates...their ruminations on....whatever. Embrace it, enjoy it and GET OVER IT! Work through the stage. You do not have to see every posting by every “friend”. As an old person you should know what your kids might not.... these people are not your friends. As an older adult you realize that “friends” are special. Friends are people you see and like and know that you can count on. Friends are not people who have told twenty people this year that they are BFF’s.
Even with the lemming like movement of old people (anyone older then my oldest child (currently about to turn 22) this is still a medium dominated by the kids. That will change as they discard this technology and move on to the next big thing (Twitter? Doubtful.) But right now it is the medium for your kids socialization. Respect that. If your child is over 18 you have no business demanding that you have access to their page without being blocked. Under 18 I think you should insist on that access but for God’s sake, use it sparingly. With knowledge is power and if you jump on the kid for every stupid post or everything their “friends” post you are going to have a hard time.
Your job as a parent is to parent. What about other kids who are not yours. here are some rules:
1. Don’t be creepy. This is a fuzzy line for some of us but be careful. An adult should never comment on the attractiveness of any picture of a person on facebook. That is a good place to start but just going from there, think before you post.
2. Don’t spy on everybody. Like I said you do not have to see every post by every friend. My general rule of Facebook control is to never move off of your front page of posts. If it is older then that it isn’t relevant anyway.
3. Never post anything on your kids page without a lot of prayerful thought.
4. When you see a kid you love or like posting stupid things, obscenities, lascivious (I love that word) pictures, drinking pictures, smoking pictures.... think before you post and think before you use that information, comment on it or anything else. A private message to them is the way to comment, not on the pic or post itself and it should be there. Think on it. This kind of response might get no reply, it might get you blocked but you are doing that person a service.
These are my thoughts on old people etiquette. Over all I have found kids to be very forgiving of my faux pas when hacking around on facebook. At first we were amusing and sometimes creepy. We now just have to learn to not get ourselves too excited and not be a pain in the ass.
1 comment:
is great to see your vocabulary expanding, even in fits and starts. Lascivious is a good word. You should also like "salacious" amd. given the sound "loquacious." Eponymous is way too good a word for its limited utility.
as to blog post, the really interesting thing would have been the story behind your discovery that commenting on kid's friend's degree of attractiveness was creepy. Sounds like it must have been painfully awkward for all involved.
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