Last Updated on February 19, 2023 by Marie Bautista
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| A photo by stockimages via freedigitalphotos.net |
“My worst nightmare ever! My mom is online!”
Teens love testing their independence and this is the stage where getting online with the parents are considered uncool.
Situation No. 1 : “My mom is adding me on Facebook. Should I accept her invite?”
How to deal with it: Yes, you should! Letting your parents know that you have an online account and accepting their invite gives you and your parents another thing to talk about and bond over. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out something cool about your mom too!
Sticky Situation No. 2: “My mom and I are now Facebook friends, and now she’s friending my friends as well! This is totally not cool. What can I do?”
How to deal with it: You might feel that your mom is invading your privacy by “friending” your friends but your mom might just want to know more about what’s going on in your life-and your friends’ lives too-so she can help you out more when you need it. She might not realize that you think it’s uncool, so tell her how you feel and ask her why she wants to be friends with your friends too. Then compromise-maybe she can send friend requests to your best friends, but not your whole class. This way, your mom won’t feel suspicious that you’re trying to hide something from her, and you and your friends won’t feel that your mom is invading your privacy-or “liking” status messages from your class frenemy.
Sticky Situation No. 3: My parents are viewing my blog! Are they spying on me?
How to deal with it: Remember that even if there are privacy settings that you can fix yourself (for example, you can make posts about your crush to be seen only by you and your best friend), your online profiles-the pages where your photo, name, and location can be seen-are still available to everybody in your network. Also, you can’t control who among your friends can repost your pictures (and not apply the same privacy settings you did). If you think that you and your friends are being spied on, try to be more open with your parents by sharing the things you and your friends like to do (and encourage your friends to do the same thing too with their parents!) and show them your pictures yourself so they won’t have to check out your pictures without you knowing. You parents are probably just curious, not suspicious.
Sticky Situation No.4: “My mom scolds me and calls me corny family nicknames on her Twitter!”
How to deal with it: If being scolded online make you feel embarrassed, or if your friends start teasing you because of your parents’ posts, talk to your parents to let them know. Reassure them that you’d still like to be their “little sweetheart”-but only at home. Try spending more time bonding with your parents when you’re at home. If you’re online all the time, can you blame them if they feel that’s the only place they can talk to you, even about private things?
Sticky Situation No. 5: “My mom’s going through my profile and telling me to take out information like our address and phone number. Why? Only my friends can see it anyway, right?
How to deal with it: Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, request for some personal information, like your full name and address, but you don’t have to give them your full address, down to the street and the number of your house. Your personal info might be made available to other people who could just be pretending to be your friend, such as stalkers and bullies. Instead, put a general location like your city or town. Also, be cautious whenever somebody you don’t know sends you a friend request. Tell your parents at once when strangers try to add you, and keep strangers from accessing your profile (this is where you should use the “block user” button). It’s not that your parents are trying to stop you from enjoying your time online or telling you what you do. They just want to protect you from the bad people lurking around on the internet so you can have safe fun when you’re online.
Very sound advice. Will let my daughter read when she's older although she's 6 and wants her own facebook account. What's your advice on that?
you've a great advice here mommy., this will benefit those who seemed to have an issue about teens being followed online by their parents.. as for my son he sometimes ask question not appropriate for his age..
Rosemarie/Gven-Rose
Great advice mommy! Few years from now, I'll be facing those questions from my son. I should know how to answer them hehe..
Great post you have here on Social Media and Teens. I am slowly preparing myself for the phase in my son's life which scares me. I don't know what to expect actually if he'll change, if he'll be easily influenced, if he's good control over peer pressure. Gah! Countless thoughts run through my mind as I think of him being a teenager. For now, I'd continue teaching him and making kulit yung mga values that he needs to learn talaga so when he's more independent na, he can manage himself well and become the gentleman that I want him to be. haaaaaaayy… 🙂
Great post addressed to teens! I suggest that this be reposted by teens with blogs, so they could be open with their parents, too.
Thats a nice post sis..Buti na lang hindi marunong gumamit ng computer parents ko..hehehe
this is indeed a very helpful article for teenageers. thanks for sharing!
Nice tips Sis. To be honest, I am also not a friend of my two kids on facebook (hehe). Not that they don't like but I do not want the thing to start from me. I don't want them to feel that I am prying on their privacy. We are like "barkadas" but sometimes they still have this "ilang" factor and I would just like to live with it. Maybe if they mature into young adults, they will be more open. 🙂 Thanks for sharing this.
Another good post, Marie. We still don't allow our kids to have their own profile on Facebook. We told them it's not right to make up or lie about their age just to have an account. Well, maybe it's just our way of stopping them from making an account for now. But I hope that when the time comes, they will be responsible enough in handling social media.
About the last one, I do that with my teenage nephew…on all other aspects, I simply lay off my nephew's case hehehe… I don't want to be known as the aunt who stalks. I do discuss some things with him that I think should not be broadcast in social networks.
Anyway, parents are not the ones teens must be careful with in posting, it's the public in general who may use/abuse what's in their account.
no. 5 happened in our family after the identity of my middle son was used to create a fake profile. it can be really scary, i can't be paranoid enough.
Great pieces of advice! I can actually relate to the teenager for now. I'd like to keep some things private from the fambam, such as my blog. Wala lang, nahihiya lang ako 😛
I like this post! My mom is on Facebook and I know I have to think twice about what I post, haha. Pero this is really good advise, one that kids should see. 🙂 I'll share it.
Nice post sis.. my daughter and i are ffb friends and i do closely monitor what she is doing online.
I don't have a teen yet but these are very sound advise.
Ah, the very awkward teen years! I'm so glad that my daughter has still not "unfriended" me in FB and I can still view her profile. Although, I think she has told her friends not to tag her so I can't read their "talks" hahaha. It's ok. I keep tabs on her activities as much as I can and so far, she is still very trusting of my parental protection on her cyber activities.
I keep reminding her of the potential risks of sharing too much. She's does follow my advice and I hope she'll keep it in mind.
Thanks for your great advice!
My parents has a facebook account. But my sister is the one managing it. I so hate her for doing that because sometimes our relatives think that they are really active and they'll like leave comments over their wall – which I hate because my parents don't even know what's happening hahaha!
My friends' dilemma is because of their parents are going online checking their statuses and stuffs and that's why their holding back now of what to post. I'm just glad my parents don't go online at all and they are not really interested! 🙂
I think I will have to deal with this when my daughter gets older.
OMG Hysterical! I must say I am guilty of some of these atrocities and my kids advised me to back off. I now keep a respectable distance and all is well. Funny!
Eliz
Thank you for the advice. I really pray and hope against hope, that I don't have to deal with most of the issues here. I'm a mother of 2 strong-willed kids.