By Julie Jargon
Kim Adam has refused her 15-year-old daughter's requests to
become Facebook friends.
"I need to have my little corner of the internet where I can
share memes and post things without fear of my teenage daughter
reading them and teasing me or confirming in her mind that I'm not
cool," Ms. Adam, an administrative assistant near Richmond, Va.,
said.
Just like teens don't want their moms following them on
Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat, many moms don't want their teens
following them on Facebook -- or at least seeing their every
post.
Many women have been posting to Facebook since they were teens
or young adults themselves. Now that many of them have children old
enough to have their own social-media accounts, they're learning
they might be exposed in ways they hadn't anticipated.
Some moms worry about past (or even current) photos showing them
engaging in behavior they discourage in their teens, such as
drinking. Others worry about family secrets being revealed. Mostly,
they tell me, they worry about all the mom-venting they do on
Facebook.
I posed a question about this in -- where else? -- a Facebook
group with thousands of members. Few dads replied, while dozens of
moms reached out.
Many shared stories of times they embarrassed their kids with
rants they didn't realize their kids would ever read. Some moms
declined to speak on the record for fear of causing family rifts.
Many said they only share personal things in private Facebook
groups they describe as their "safe space," free from the eyes of
children, spouses and their own parents. Countless posts from moms
in various Facebook groups begin, "I can't share this on my own
page..."
While teens typically write off Facebook as being for old
people, many are on it because schools and sports coaches post
information there, or because they want to keep up with relatives.
At the end of 2019, nearly 10 million Americans between the ages of
12 and 17 used Facebook at least once a month, according to
research firm eMarketer.
Ms. Adam said she isn't revealing any deep, dark secrets on
Facebook but wants to share things freely with her adult friends --
and particularly those whose kids are friends with her
daughter.
At one point she accepted a friend request from her daughter but
excluded her from seeing posts. You can do this by indicating
within a post whether to share it with "friends except" a specific
person, or by choosing specific friends to share with. You can
create a restricted list of friends on Facebook -- they'll only be
able to see what's shared publicly. You can also choose who sees
specific past posts -- or limit all past posts -- in the privacy
settings.
"She asked why I never post anything," Ms. Adam said.
Eventually, she just unfriended her daughter altogether.
A few years ago, when Julie Kaigler's youngest daughter was 15,
Ms. Kaigler thought she was safely sharing personal details about
her long-ago divorce while commenting on a friend's post. She had
never shared details of the split with either of her two daughters,
so as not to put them in the middle.
"A couple of days later, when I picked up my daughter from
school after a trip, she said, 'I need to ask you a question,' said
Ms. Kaigler, of Wexford, Penn. "That's when she told me she had
seen the post."
Her daughter was upset that she had to learn the details of the
divorce on Facebook. Ms. Kaigler said they had a good talk about
it. "I'm generally pretty open with my kids," she said. "That was
the one thing I had tried to protect them from."
Michelle Dightman, an accountant in Leawood, Kan., wasn't
thinking about her two teenage sons when she shared an article
about Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, who died in 2015
from a drug overdose. It was written by his ex-wife, who pleaded
with fans not to glorify his death. Ms. Dightman posted that she
appreciated the article, as she was the daughter of a father who
had died of alcoholism.
She had never discussed her father's drinking with her sons, but
a few days after she shared the article, her then 14-year-old asked
her about it. Ms. Dightman said it gave her a good opportunity to
open up to him about it.
"If I'm going to be credible as a parent in giving them advice,
I have to be humble, transparent and honest with my kids," she
said. "They can go back and look through my timeline and posts and
see that their mother and father worked through stuff and made
mistakes and posted things that maybe we shouldn't have posted. It
will prompt conversations."
Even when moms think they're being super-careful, they can get
busted. Barb Hogan, a small-business owner in Cincinnati, only
shared personal things in a private Facebook group for mothers
where all the members are moderators.
"It's locked down tight," she said. "Nothing any of us post can
be seen by anyone who isn't in the group -- unless you're dumb and
you leave your computer open and step away to put in laundry and
your teen sits down to look up something on Google and reads your
rant."
Ms. Hogan had been venting about some drama involving her then
16-year-old daughter when she stepped away. Her daughter, who is
now 23, saw the post and became furious. "She got over it," Ms.
Hogan said.
Some moms can now laugh with their kids about old posts.
Back in 2012, Sarah Tucker, of Omaha, Neb., made fun of her
daughter after a singing audition at school. On Facebook, she'd
written, "Abbie is good at lots of things. Singing isn't one of
them."
A few years later, when Abbie turned 13 and got her own Facebook
account, Ms. Tucker tagged her in a bunch of old posts, not
thinking about the comments she'd made. When the audition post
surfaced later as a Facebook memory, Abbie herself reposted it with
the comment, "Sarah Tucker thinks I'm a bad singer," followed by an
eye-roll emoji. "She did that to poke fun at me, which was totally
fair," Ms. Tucker said.
All of this has been weighing on Tennessee mom Amy Brown. "When
I allow my teen to get a Facebook account, I assume I will want to
be her FB friend to keep an eye on things," she posted on the
social network, asking about ways to maintain boundaries. "There's
nothing on my page I'd just die about, but I've had this account
since before the kids were born, and can't guarantee I filtered
every single post through the 'would I say this to my kids'
filter."
When I spoke to her, she said she's worried her 13-year-old
daughter will think she complained too much about parenting. She
doesn't want to delete the old posts, but she's considering
blocking her daughter from seeing them for now.
While her daughter isn't exactly clamoring to get on Facebook --
she'd prefer Instagram -- Ms. Brown feels it's where the teen could
learn how to conduct herself on social media under the watchful
eyes of aunts, uncles and adult friends.
"I can see the irony," Ms. Brown said. "At the same time that
we're telling our teens never to post anything they wouldn't want
shared with everyone, we're realizing we don't want everything we
ever posted to be shared with our teenagers."
Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 26, 2020 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
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