Blocking Facebook from your kids? Good luck...

Parents: the whole world is conspiring against you:  Check out these items posted on Yahoo! Answers...  First is a 13 year old who is not allowed to have a Facebook account, and the next is another youngster whose parents blocked Facebook on their PC, looking for a way to circumvent it. 

No longer just confined to the ideas from the other guys at the lunch table, these kids now have the entire globe at their disposal when they want to try to get around their parents' wishes. 

And some of the responses?  Everything from detailed technical tips and tricks (proxies, safe mode, etc.) to outright encouragements of defiance (just set up an account in secret; why did you even ask?)

Not suggesting that your actions as a parent are futile, but it's just a reminder that it's a bigger battle than just between you and your offspring.  Fight the good fight!

Your online identity hijacked - by your kids?

Yesterday on msnbc's "Morning Joe", host Mika Brzezinski made a comment about goings-on at her house this weekend…  Apparently her daughter hijacked her Twitter account, in an attempt to --wait for it-- contact teenybopper singer Justin Beiber.  To use a generational comparison, it would be like Walter Cronkite's kid sneaking on the set of CBS News, putting on horn-rimmed glasses and mustache, and saying "uh, Paul McCartney, if you're watching, please give me a call, I have some, uh, important things to discuss with you"'…

Reunions: does Facebook help or hinder?

I've been getting communications recently about Reunion Weekend at my college alma mater.  I'm coming up on one of those milestone years (20!), so there is a bit more activity surrounding this year's festivities.  (Twenty years!?!  Feels like yesterday sometimes...) 

I have kept in touch just a small number of close friends out of college.   High school?  Forget it.  Even a few years out of high school I was only in touch with a few friends.   And one of them put it best:  "If I want to see anyone from high school, I'll call to have a pizza delivered…"  (Needless to say he didn't have a very high opinion of high school…)  But things changed recently…

Talking with Strangers - it's not as creepy, thanks to Facebook

So our little offspring is looking into a 'Study Abroad' program at college.  Very cool!  This came up in a conversation I was having at work, and it so happens that this colleague of mine has a grandson who is at her destination school right now.  So he suggests that my daughter contact his grandson, to get some first-hand knowledge of the place.  Simple enough, right?  But think about it, this is really an attempt to make a 3rd degree connection:  my daughter, to me, to my co-worker, to his grandson.  How would you start this conversation?  Isn't this a bit awkward?  Even creepy, perhaps?  "Uh, you don't know me, but…"

You're being watched - with help from the kids

So we were out and about running errands the other day, when I ran into an old friend and colleague of mine. Haven't seen him for years, but we just picked up where we left off all that time ago... So we're catching up when all of a sudden he says, "So I see the kids' Facebook pages, they sure are growing, aren't they? And I don't see your wife out there with a Facebook, what's up with that?

I guess I was a little taken aback, and before my brain caught up with my mouth, I heard myself say, "What, are you stalking me or something?!?".