Now, when I was eighteen, Facebook was still a relatively new phenomenon. Four years later, Facebook has closed the generation gap between parents and children. My parents have a better understanding of our generation’s favorite procrastination tool, since they are now just as hopelessly addicted to the little red notification box as I was, once upon a time. (Okay you caught me, I still am.)
Thankfully, parents didn’t latch on to the Facebook trend while most of us were still in high school, because let’s face it, they would be horrified to know what we were doing when we were seventeen years young. As the social networking empire gained notoriety and popularity throughout the years, it was only a matter of time until our parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and twice-removed cousin Larry all hopped on the bandwagon and inundated us with friend requests.
Let us all consider the ramifications of this phenomenon for a minute. Not so long ago, many of us wouldn’t think twice about posting pictures of a sloppy Saturday night to our profile or informing the Facebook community that we’d be skipping all of our Monday classes due to a Sunday too-Funday hangover via a status update. Now, there is a slight hesitation. While the pictures of you funneling tequila shots or your illuminating status updates may be amusing to your friends, Mom, Dad, and crazy Aunt Millie may be less than pleased with your “so college” lifestyle.
What is a collegiette™ to do when her parents have unprecedented access to the intimate details of your campus life? My best advice: embrace it! Maybe I’m just lucky and the biggest annoyance to having my parents on Facebook is having to teach them how to actually use it, but I think it’s an easier way to keep in touch with them as opposed to playing telephone tag during the week. However, for those of you with tiger mother-esque relatives watching your every move, more drastic action might be required.
According to an unofficial survey conducted by yours truly, I found that of the 80% of respondents whose parent or parents have a Facebook account, most of them (about 72%) are Facebook friends with their parents. (Shame on you, outliers! Not accepting your mom’s friend request is just unnecessarily harsh. Remember, she went through three days of painful labor to bring you into the world, the least you could do is click “confirm”.) Encouragingly, only 38% of those who took the survey felt as though they needed to censor certain information like photos or status updates they would not want their parents to see.
So while it seems that most of us are more or less comfortable with having an online relationship with our parents, it’s still safe to say that there are certain things they just don’t need to witness. Since we all go to Northeastern, we all know a thing or two about cleaning up our Facebook profiles (thank you Co-op 101!) so as not to deter any potential employers. It might be worth utilizing these skills and applying them more often than strictly during the co-op interview seasons. If you don’t want Goldman Sachs to see it, chances are you don’t want Mom to see it either.
Ultimately, it’s up to you just how much information you want about yourself to be available to not just your parents, but also the online world in general. It wouldn’t kill you to do a thorough sweep of your photos every once in a while, and believe me when I say NO ONE needs a constant status update about the minute goings-on of your day-to-day life. The “limited profile” option on Facebook is also available for you to pick and choose what information certain people are allowed to see. Here’s the bottom line: display the photos and information that you think presents the best version of you to the world. Remember collegiettes™, maintaining an air of mystery is always sexy!