Generation Gap on Facebook: Good or Bad?

We often hear complains here and there about the connections between social networks and our real lives and sometimes we even see what looks like real family conflicts with husbands and wives remaining unconnected on Facebook, even when they both have accounts. But now we are facing a new issue of the growing disappointment of a certain portion of Facebook users over having to be on the same network with another portion of users, those happen to be much older.

Here I am talking about the new concern of children who do not want their parents, uncles or aunts to be on the same network they are on as they suspect the adults will want to spy on them while they obviously want to keep certain parts of their lives private on Facebook. And even if we do admit that some adults will probably have the only purpose of keeping an eye on what their children are up to (instead of connecting to some old friends they have not seen for ages), I think that the children can be concerned all they want but presence of the older generation will only benefit them in the long run.

Since Facebook was initially for students only, many of those who were on the network as students and felt some sort of a privilege because of being where others were not admitted, are now irritated that they are losing that privilege and have to share their beloved networks with those they don’t think belong on Facebook at all. At the same time many of us, those who were only admitted when Facebook removed the students-only restriction, try not to even think of Facebook as of something that was supposed to be egalitarian at some point: we are happy the network let us in and we don’t think excluding us could be reasonable from any point of view. What’s more, we fully realize that it is with our help that Facebook can make money at all: after all, unlike students, we do have money at our disposal to spend and we are probably more likely to click on ads if we see the right product advertised.

But of course it is quite understandable that students don’t care about everyone’s right to be on Facebook or about Facebook’s right to make money off the network: they want to keep the network to themselves and behave on Facebook same as they do when surrounded by close friends in campus, for example. And there are pretty simple solutions to behaving like you want on Facebook all you want without even having to protest against your parents’ presence on Facebook.

The easiest route to go is simply not to add one’s parents as friends on Facebook and leaving their friend requests unanswered or ignored - in this manner your parents will know you are on Facebook (they probably know it anyway) but they will never be able to see your activity, your photos or your wall so your privacy (as you understand it) will remain intact. After all, I don’t think it’s such a difficult thing to explain to one’s parents that you want to keep Facebook for your college friends only. Another way to go is to play with privacy settings and letting your parents or family see only limited profile where you will not post certain information.

But while there are ways to avoid one’s parents from seeing what you are up to on Facebook, it will be much better for you in the long run to have them as friends and learn proper social networking behavior until it is too late. The problem is that the most obvious thing about this whole problem and about the generation gap on Facebook is that in reality you should not have anything on Facebook that you don’t want absolutely anyone with an internet connection to see.

After all, as soon as you upload a photo that only your selected friends can see, you should realize that it can be accessible to others as well via a variety of ways: your friends can show these photos to others, others can see these photos on your friends’ computer screens, or an account can be hacked and your private photos will go public easily. And I don’t even want to mention the situation when you should not really trust your friends as they can also share the photos with others intentionally for whatever reason they may want to.

Everyone should have understood by now (especially the children that have grown up in the digital age) that internet and privacy have very little in common and once something is online, it is rarely private any more (unless we are talking about files backup and storage services with excellent security and protection standards) and you should keep that in mind at all times. If you really want to keep something truly private, the only acceptable way is to keep it all to yourself and only share with those people you truly trust, preferably using communication means that are known to be safe (like email).

My personal opinion is that we have already seen enough embarrassing situations when yesterday’s students could not get the jobs they wanted after their potential employer checked their online presence and found some embarrassing facts or pictures easily available for anyone to see. It is obvious that children do need some education to learn how to properly behave on social networks not to embarrass themselves - now or in the future - but they are rarely willing to listen to their parents or teachers persuading them that some things simply don’t belong online. So maybe presence of one’s parents on Facebook and realization of the fact that one can be watched by adults will help children understand the basics of proper behavior on social networks like no explanation will. And if presence of parents will stop some teens from posting their nude photos online (which they will most certainly regret later), I think all their protests should simply be ignored: parents or no parents, learning how to keep private things private will not hurt.

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