Parents who embrace technology instil fear into their child

This post is inspired by the following video I saw on The Onion 3 weeks ago:

For my part, I have also been noticing the distressing fact that a couple of my friends had befriended one of their parents on Facebook in recent months. Thank goodness my parents are technophobes.

I still remembered clearly that a friend’s status went like this when he befriended his father:

I just added my dad on facebook.

Followed by these comments:

Dad: Hello friends of !

Friend: Hi Mr Tan! : )

Dad: Hello, are you a good friend of my son?

[…]

I can appreciate parents who keep up with technology and know what are Youtube and social networking sites; nevertheless, no matter how close you are to your family members, you would still like to retain a measure of privacy from them. Even my little brother would not let me on to his Facebook as he has this ~secret life~ going on that he don’t want his sister knowing since she will go tattling to daddy and mommy. Indeed, he knows his sister very well.

The situation would probably be different by the time people of my age become parents of teenagers because we have been in their shoes so we are likely to be more sensitive to the privacy issues that may arise (and it could also be due to the fact that we have things in our lives that we don’t want them to know as well). However, the current parents of my generation do not see Facebook the way we see it; most of them are likely thinking in glee that “Oh goody, now I have this tool that I can use to monitor my son / daughter and know the company he / she hangs out with!”.

Hence, I have come up with the following possible options and questions that may arise in the unlikelihood that I find myself receiving a “Friend Request” from one of my parents.

1. Ignore it. Be prepared to answer “Why haven’t you accepted me on Facebook, are you hiding something?”

2. Accept it and put them under “Limited Profile”. Then wait for “How come I can’t view your photos on Facebook? I know you have them ‘cause I have seen you looking at them on your laptop.”

3. Accept it. Get ready to answer questions such as “I thought you were with Lizzie yesterday? Who are those boys with you?”

4. Accept it then delete him / her after some time and have this thrown in your face:

source: www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com

With that, I would like to introduce you to this entertaining site: Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook.

Here are some posts that made me LOLed in real life.

source: www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com

source: www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com

source: www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com