Students dislike the potential for parents and relatives to snoop as more of the older generation create Facebook accounts

By Celina Wu
<[email protected]>

An avid Facebook user, junior Mercedes Massey said she frequents the popular social networking site every day of the week. When she logs into her account, she usually receives various notifications alerting her of her friends’ activity on the site, such as wall posts on her profile or comments on her photos or status. But in addition to receiving the typical feedback from many of her friends and peers, Massey also finds notifications from an unexpected group of people – her parents and relatives.

“My dad, my mom, my step dad, my aunts and uncles all have Facebook accounts, and all of them are my Facebook friends,” Massey said. “My family usually posts things asking how I am doing or how I am doing in school in a regular basis.”
Massey is not alone in her current situation as she is among the rapidly growing number of the younger Facebook demographic dealing with the integration of the older generation into a social network that teens and young adults previously dominated.

According to iStrategyLabs, a digital agency focused on providing clients with interactive strategy, experiential marketing and content creation services, the number of Facebook users who were between the ages of 35 and 54 grew approximately 190.2 percent within the last six months. In addition, this age group accounts for the largest percentage of all Facebook users at 30.8 percent as of Aug. 4. Furthermore, during the same time period, Facebook saw a 513.7 percent growth of individuals who were 55 years old or older with profiles on the site. These accelerated increases of older Facebook users have caused certain feelings of aversion stemming from the younger generation, including Massey, who have accounts.

The main point of contention that has brought about unsettling sentiments among students is concerning the objective of their parents and other relatives, in obtaining a Facebook profile. Massey and most all others in the teenage and young adult age group assert that their family members mainly want to utilize Facebook as a convenient forum through which they can keep tabs on or embarrass them.

“I feel like my parents and relatives, especially my dad and uncle, are invading my privacy through Facebook,” Massey said. “My dad and uncle are on Facebook all the time and since I am friends with both of them, I know they go through my profile to check up on me, like looking at me and my friends’ wall-to-walls, my pictures and other comments on my profile.”

According to Massey, there have been various instances in which it was evident that her relatives were checking up on her. Specifically, she said, “One time, my uncle sent one of my best guy friends a two page long message about how he didn’t approve of a comment that my friend left on one of my statuses.”

Although Massey said her family members use Facebook to snoop on her profile and meddle in her personal life, her uncle, Chris Barron, said he does not intentionally survey her profile to check up on her. “I never specifically look at Mercedes’ profile to spy on her. I only go to her profile when I see that she has posted something that catches my interest. Then, I go see what it is, and I might respond to it as well. However, I don’t study her photos or scrutinize what is on her profile,” he said.

Another student who has had firsthand experience of having family members with Facebook accounts is junior Karlie Hansen. She said her two sets of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all have Facebook profiles.

Hansen said one of the particular problems she has is concerning the photos that her mom displays on Facebook. “My mom takes a lot of pictures and has posted pictures of me at various ages on her profile,” she said. “I untag myself in those pictures because I don’t want my friends seeing photos of me taken during my awkward stages or when I was a baby.”

Both Massey and Hansen said they have learned to deal with having parents and other relatives on Facebook. Massey said she has purposely deleted some comments and untagged herself in some things to prevent conflict with her family. Likewise, Hansen said she has intentionally censored herself in various items she posts on Facebook so that those she does not get in trouble for those comments.

According to Sergeant Phil Hobson, students should use extreme caution when posting information on any social networking web site because if they are not used responsibly, they can be very dangerous.

“When you place photographs and personal information on the World Wide Web, you automatically lose a right to privacy that some people take for granted,” Hobson said via e-mail. “I cannot stress enough the importance of using these sites in a responsible manner. A good analogy would be ‘anything you would not post on a billboard in front of the school’ should not be posted on your page. Anyone from prospective employers, college admittance officials, parents, school personnel and law enforcement could have possible access to the information placed on these networking sites.”

Furthermore, Massey and Hansen said they both agreed that they don’t really mind having family members on the same social network as long as their parents and relatives don’t use Facebook to get involved in their personal and social lives.

“I don’t like how my family can easily see what my friends and I are up to and snoop around my profile by using Facebook,” Massey said. “Besides that, I don’t have a big problem with the older generation on Facebook.”