By: Travis Harvey (Illinois State University)
Follow Travis on Twitter
For the last few days I’ve been at home with my parents and everything has been going great… that is until my mother discovered Facebook. This is no cause for alarm because she doesn’t fully understand how to use it yet. I keep getting questions asking where my “page” is and how she gets to it. Well little does she know that will never happen. I have many friends who have suffered with this problem and they say just give in and add her.
The thing that probably isn’t understood is that some parents don’t approve of the college lifestyle that we all love to lead and , with my parents being that way, I like to do a little separation of home and school. Which means anything that happens at school, stays at school… unless I add my mom on Facebook.
Parents think that everyone uses Facebook the way they do, to give you what is assumed to be daily words of wisdom. In reality it’s daily embarrassments, remember they hold all your old baby pictures from those bathtub pictures to your awkward phase in seventh grade and trust me you want no one seeing the video of you dancing to “Hit Me Baby One More Time” (this video DOES NOT exist by the way, so no contacting my parents to make me a YouTube sensation).
So if your parents are anything like mine they will be relentless about being your friend, which is funny because when we were younger I’m pretty sure I heard the words “don’t treat me like one of your friends.” I think the only solution to the problem is to add them, but utilize the limited profile option and make it seem like you never even use Facebook in the first place. After all of that if they ask you why they can’t see your pictures, friends, or wall… just play dumb and act like it’s Facebook’s fault.
To make matters worse, parents are now asking about Twitter, how precious… the caps lock button should be very afraid, it may as well break itself now. As for all of you out there with cool parents who think Facebook should be for our generation you are so lucky and I envy you. As for everyone else like myself, how are you dealing with the parental Facebook/Twitter craze?
