Would you let YOU'R Mom see your Facebook?

Online social networking can sometimes be tricky. It is so easy to misrepresent yourself online because you are never held accountable for the person you portray on the internet. However, I try to be as genuine on my Facebook account as I am in person. The question asked is whether or not we would allow our parents to be “friends” with us on Facebook. Personally, I feel that the person I am on my Facebook is the same person that I am to my mother. I would have no problem with her viewing my profile. Actually, I show her pictures on Facebook of my friends or members of our family. She is familiar with what I post online simply because I am always saying “Oh, hey Mom! Come and see this!”

My mother refuses to sign up for Facebook. She says that most of it is a waste of time. I can see her point. Some people get carried away with how much they post to their pages. She laughs and cracks jokes at people who document their whole day through their status. However, she is not above sitting next to me on the couch and scanning through my newsfeed with me. My mother is from the age of handwritten letters and phone calls, not facebook. I think she refuses to get her own account simply because it would be hard for her to adjust to. I try to explain to her that it is a nice way to keep up with people, she argues that you can just call somebody and ask how they’ve been.

I think that the younger generation loves facebook simply because it is basically social multitasking. We have become a generation of multitaskers. We hardly ever do just one single thing at a time. The idea of being able to catch up with our all of our friends at once, in a fast paced manner seems practical and convenient to us. We like to be able to log in to our accounts, scroll down our newsfeed see what “everybody” is doing within a few minutes. We like to be able to carry on different conversations all at once.

As nice as Facebook is, I think that we can all agree that there is nothing like a personal phone call, a handwritten letter, or a face to face chat with a friend. Facebook can sometimes seem impersonal whereas old fashioned methods of communication have a nostalgic comfort and closeness attached.  I try to take the best of both worlds and use the old and the new in my social networking.