"Your mom just friended me on Facebook..is nothing sacred anymore?" Perhaps Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter have brought about a whole new level of Internet profiling and networking, but did any of us really think it would go this far? Now that these popular networking systems have been around for quite a while, it is just about time for them to have a downside. Perhaps that downside is that ANYONE can join. Now moms and dads, uncles and aunts, teachers and principals are getting Facebook accounts, Myspace profiles, and subscribing to your twitter pages. This may be ok, for the average teen or young adult that has nothing to hide-but let's face it somewhere on those pages is something you probably wouldn't want mom or your English teacher to see. In some respects, it makes sense for these slightly older generations to create their own profile pages. Most of us only interact through Facebook with people we know and hang out with on a regular basis but older people started to log on to these sights in order to genuinely reconnect with people from their past (as genuine as you can get with online profiling systems). But lately, as parents, relatives, and teachers have become obsessed with Myspace and Facebook as well, they have found a new motive for using this particular form of technology-to spy on you! For the most part, parents with an account on one of these sights can few at least some of your profile without being "friends" with you. However, if they want to snoop around a little bit more, they can friend request you and of course, you wouldn't deny a friend request for dear ol' dad, would you? My advice to you is that mom, dad, and your 11th grade guidance counselor are NOT your friends and therefore are people you can afford to ignore on your friend request list. My advice is not meant to compare your parents and teacher and employers to sexual predators or anything like that-but if you choose to take part in one or all of these networking systems and you choose to have things on your profiles that they might not appreciate, then do the best you can and stick with your own kind. Mom and dad need to know that their friends are people their age-perhaps colleagues or people they went to college with, and your friends are your old middleschool and highschool buddies as well as newer college friends. I think that parents have a right to know how their children are doing, but it seems a little childish to snoop around their kid's Myspace profile to find things out. We cannot stoop down to a level in the world where parents have to sneak around their kids to learn about their lives. No matter how generations of parents develop and no matter how advanced the internet networking systems become, there is no excuse not to be able to talk to your child straight up and ask them what goes on in their world.
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