Sunday, August 31st, 2008...7:41 pm - Cassandra
Antisocial Networking
Oh the horror when one realises that what one publishes freely on the web (often only to ones community of facebook friends of course), is potentially accessible…..not to companies wishing to use that information to advertise etc… …but to THE PARENTS!!!
An article on SMH today looks at the dilemmas facing teens / tweens when their social networking site such as Facebook is invaded by their parents - not to mention the outrage of their parents “friending” their friends!!! 
Of course this concern is not a new one, in fact the original Washington Post article referenced by SMH is from March!! (and so is this response from Laura Bergells).
What I find interesting is this assumption that parents are joining these communities purely to monitor what their children are doing. No doubt there is a percentage of parents who are joining up for that reason but isn’t there a possibility that some parents are just interested in the benefits of being part of a social network? Who says that all parents have no lives of their own and have nothing better to do in their spare time than spy on their kids?? For the adults perspective see Cathy Hamilton’s amusing article ‘Facebook triggers fresh social anxieties’ and Michelle Slatalla for the NY Times ‘omg my mom joined facebook!!’
I learnt in a very informative staff info session on social networks last week that this social networking phenomena does not belong to generation Y (well, not in the traditional sense) as it was in fact an earlier generation that developed the concept. Take that tweens!
Social scientists, academics and psychologists are having a field day with this stuff! I can’t wait to see how the research and conclusions morph over the coming years.
Other interesting Facebook news so far this week:
2 Comments
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 am
I love the idea of a ‘block parent’ filter for kids
- y’know, a friends list that your parents are banned from ’spying’ on…now imagine charging for the privilege, there’s a simple Social Network business model - 
May 26th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I think I am lucky that both my teenage nieces want me as a friend on their facebook, but saying that I am not their mother and not going to report back to my sibling who is their parent!! A friend of mine who is fully into adulthood had this problem her mum become net savy and join facebook and tried to friend her daughter the advice all round was to ignore, regardless of age no one wants their parents knowing what they are up to. I think banning parents is a good idea
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