USVI-On-Line

We didn't let child get on FB until last year when she started high school. To me FB with the privacy setting seems a lot safer than MySpace. She had heard enough scare stories about MS that she didn't want to do that anyway.

Most of my family are so old they can barely email. I may play around with it, but I'm not sure I know enough people to enjoy it. Maybe I'll ask all TAD's friends to be my friends. That should go over big at home.

We insist on privacy settings for our daughter and she is good with it that way. We wouldn't allow her to have an account otherwise.

I do think facebook is more private than MySpace. I used to like MySpace, but really I don't like either of them these days. I'm sick of having people in my business, but all my high school friends are on FB. I don't really know how to use it, so I only check it when my email tells me there's something that needs my attention.

I'll admit - I'm a forumite with a FB page. I'm in my early 30s, and most of my friends are on it. We use it for two purposes: (1) to keep in touch with old business contacts, and (2) to keep up with friends/family spread all over this country. Even if it's just a comment on a "status" or a quick note, it's a nice way to know what's going on with your good friends when you live hours away from each other.

I set all of my settings to private (friends only) and I'm very discriminating about what pictures go up (and what pics I'm identified in by other members).

alw1977 wrote: I set all of my settings to private (friends only) and I'm very discriminating about what pictures go up (and what pics I'm identified in by other members).

What troubles me the most about FB and MS is not what my daughter is posting, but what her friends may be posting. I have seen many FB and MS pages that aren't private where their friends' pictures, names, addresses, schools attended, etc. are posted. If a predator really wanted to track someone down, it wouldn't take too much effort to do so. I don't believe children/teenagers realize the risk they take when they disclose so much information on the Internet. It's the "nothing bad will ever happen to me" syndrome that goes along with their age, inexperience, and maturity level.

One reason I'm thinking about getting a FB page is so I can have access to my daughter's profile. I do snoop around occasionally and fortunately have found it to be very appropriate. But, I see a lot of inappropriate content on other profiles.

Do you all check your kids' profiles either with or without their knowledge? I know some parents believe it's a violation of their child's privacy. Just curious.

California Girl wrote:Even so, it so pays to be a lot less visible on the Internet.

But - it really doesn't make a difference if you are "on" the Internet, or not. With the web, if I wanted to find out who lives where, their phone number, address, email, age, etc. all I need to do is start searching - I don't need to know "you" or anyone else. I sort of think the stalking/preying/privacy thing of being "on line" is a bit of a canard - the Internet gets a bad rap for this stuff, but any enterprising psychopath can find most anything on anyone, whether that person is "on line" (meaning on FaceBook, MySpace, a forum, etc.) or not. True - it may make it easier, and some people (IMO) put way too much personal information on line... but whether you do or not, the risks are always out there about your privacy -

pjayer wrote:

alw1977 wrote: Do you all check your kids' profiles either with or without their knowledge? I know some parents believe it's a violation of their child's privacy. Just curious.

My children have willingly invited me to be their "friend" on facebook. I do look over their stuff and have found nothing inappropriate (yet). Even with all of us in one house, it's a nice way to share pictures with each other...("Mom, I've added a bunch of pictures to facebook from the swim meet, some from my camera and some are from other swimmers.") Very convenient.

I just hate the new format so I'm not using it much anymore.

I use facebook to keep an eye on my daughters' facebook presence. Privacy settings turned on full. One odd side effect is that a lot of my 16 year old daughters friends have "friended" me cause I guess I'm the cool Dad. Seeing alerts for some of the things those girls post is a bit much. I think they grow up a bit faster than they need to.

If you really want to piss off a Mom, tell her that her daughter is making racy comments on Facebook. Talk about killing the messenger. Well, at least somebody keeps an eye out.

As for any real utility from Facebook? I don't get much out of it. Linkedin is useful.

Cheers, RickG

I love facebook. I have reconnected with old friends, some that I have not seen in 20 years.

I also play games because I get bored with TV and Chip gets bored with me so I need things to keep me busy!

I keep a close eye on my kids' accounts. I have their passwords and I check them on a regular basis. (I randomly check their text messages as well.) I learn quite a bit about their friends/acquaintances and I let my kids know when I see something that I find inappropriate. I don't feel that it is an invasion of privacy. Well, it is more that I feel that it is my right as a parent, and it helps me be a better one when I know what my children and their friends are up to.

This is going to be a difficult one for me - we caught the kids watching some lesbian pornography (I have 2 girls, 7 & 10) this spring. They were searching YouTube to look for Harry Potter stuff, started doing searches on "harry kissing hermione" and ended up there... quite an eye opener for us (and them!). They are not into the computer enough to be using the social networking stuff, etc. and most Italian kids are way behind on it, so while we haven't had to deal with FaceBook and MySpace yet - we obviously were not even prepared to deal with their unsupervised surfing (the solution was to basically take their computer use away - which sounds sort of harsh but they didn't miss it at all over the summer). I guess we were sort of lulled into a false sense of security thinking they were on PBS and dress up game sites -
Now that the summer is over there is basically no unsupervised surfing, but if and when they want to use sites like FaceBook, etc. I am not sure how I am going to approach it. Part of me feels like that stuff is sort of like a diary - if you have one, it is yours, and it is private. Maybe I just won't let them use these sites until I feel they are at an appropriate age - though what that is I don't know either!
There is a really good PBS Frontline episode about all this - and you can watch it on-line of course: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

Both of my boys have MySpace accounts - the younger one and his friends use it to communicate more than they do their phones!

The older one has gotten into Facebook (he joined a group that hates the new user interface!) because he said that it's more "international". Some of the Odyssey of the Mind kids that we hosted from Russia last summer have accounts and they all stay in touch that way.

I have an account on Facebook as well, but don't spend much time there - but it's somewhat interesting to see how often some people update their status - "I'm at work now", "I'm going out to a club in an hour" etc...