For the most part, the older people in my immediate family don’t know anything about my Internet presence. My father doesn’t use a computer. My mother is a little better, she browses a few web sites and does that e-mail thing.
So it was a bit surprising when I saw a new Facebook friend request on the weekend. It was from my aunt or specifically, my mother’s older sister. Now I’ve seen many, many examples on the Internet where people allowed their parents to be a Facebook friend and that did not work out so well. Yes, I realize my aunt isn’t my Mom but as sisters, they talk on the phone fairly regularly.
Now I don’t have extremely embarrassing pictures in my Facebook profile but at the same time there’s the stuff you do while you’re not around your family and the stuff you do while in family company. Those two different kinds of “stuff” don’t mix well sometimes.
I haven’t responded to the friend request yet and I’m not entirely sure what to do. I wish there was a setting so that a friend is a “limited” friend, where you can control exactly what about your profile they can see. I swear there was something like this but I can’t find it anymore.
So do any of you have your parents as a friend on Facebook? How’s that working out for you?
There is a Limited Profile setting.
Enabling it is easy. Look at your Friends list. Near the right-hand side of each row, there’s a drop menu. Just select Limited Profile and that person will be added to that List.
To change what the Limited Profile is, move your mouse up to the Settings tab and when the drop-menu appears, click on Privacy Settings. Click on Profile, and… and… Hey, where’d it go?
Cam, thanks to your tips and a bit of Googling, I was able to customize my settings for my aunt. She and I are now safely Facebook friends!
What are you going to say if she finds out about this blog post?
My mom was on Facebook before me. At least I’ve taught her to be ahead on the computer curve.