According to a recent survey of parents using social media, 55% say they’re only on Facebook and Twitter to monitor their children’s online activities, with another 5% admitting they’d do the same–if they knew how.
Eleven percent of parents polled set up their Facebook accounts purely to “snoop” on Jim and Jane, 15-percent have tried to Friend their children (Thanks Mom), with 4-percent of those requests being rejected. Not surprisingly, 13-percent have resorted to logging onto friends accounts in order to check up on their children.
When asked to explain their behavior, 36-percent blamed their “overprotective” parental instincts, where as 14-percent said they were just being “nosey”. A sad 24-percent confessed that Facebook was the only way they could find out what their sons and daughters were up to, while 6-percent found that the social networking site allowed them to avoid having “awkward conversations” with their offspring.
The last statistic is perhaps the most revealing and unfortunate; as much as I’d have hated my Mom friending me on Facebook while I was still in high school, I’d hate even more to have a Mom who stalked me online to avoid talking to me.
It's not all bad. I've friended my two oldest sons. One's on tour and the other's in Korea. Watching their facebook activity saves them the trouble of writing me a special email to tell me what they've been doing.
My Dad was the 14% that were just being nosey. He use to randomly google search my common online handle to see what I was up to. When I found out, I was pretty upset since I thought he didn't trust me. (I never did anything bad so there was no reason to go behind my back like that.) However, once I realized he's just a nosey kind of person, I forgave him.
Also, as an adult, if I had a kid who was online a bunch… I'd totally be nosey like that too!! lol!
So, apparently 100% of parents with a facebook or twitter *only* use it to monitor the activities of their pages? Whoever wrote the copy on this version of the article failed at data extrapolation.
No sir, you fail at reading graphs. it clearly states that in this study, 55% of parents with a facebook or twitter use it to spy on their children.
Can I just say as a teenager (19), I think any parent who doesn't check their childs facebook is actually being somewhat irresponsible. I know, I know, privacy and all of that, but it's NOT private. If your child puts something inappropriate on that site, many people are going to see it.
Maybe it's just the way I was raised… But that's my thought.
you were obviously raised right. i'm also betting you don't put stuff on there you wouldn't want your parents to see.
Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but I don't think the statistic was that 55% were ONLY on facebook/twitter to monitor their children. I'm sure a large part of that 55% use fb/twitter as social tools for themselves as well.
Parents are the big STALKERS !!