Friday, June 18, 2010

Mom, Get Off Facebook!!!!

How do kids react when their parents decide to go social, or connect to networking sites like Facebook or Twitter? Surveys compiled by MyYearbook and "social media teen influencer survey" were distributed to eMarketer and the results were quite staggering. Research indicates that almost 90% of youthful Americans are subscribed and actively participate on social networking sites, so where the growth will need to come from is the users in the adult market. So how do kids react when parents, adults, or family members are invading their "turf"? Research indicates that under 20 demographic are annoyed or actually hate it when their parents join Facebook or Twitter.



I am surprised by the backlash from this age group as to all the privacy protection controls that individuals can place on their specific site, or at least restrict the viewing privileges of those be-friended. The next graph will indicate the restrictions set by children to their parents on sites like Facebook.

But, if you are in the same camp as Justin Serrano, Senior Vice President of Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, he states that "in a Facebook era, the online arena serves as a new channel for parents to keep tabs on what and how their children are doing, and its notable that a sizable percentage of teens today seem comfortable with the dynamic. The parent-teen online relationship is still relatively uncharted territory. What we're seeing is that parents are increasing expressing interest in being able to monitor their kids' progressions online, and teens are adjusting to this in different ways."

If anyone reads this blog and they have 10-18 year old children, please express your concerns with this new phenomena.....are there struggles with your children? Does their seem to be a backlash from them for you to get off Facebook? Did they even accept your friendship, etc? I am not in this camp with Landon only being 20 months; I would enjoy hearing your trials with the social network site after reading this article though.

Retrieved June 18th, 2010 at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx.?R=1007759



Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Jim D.June 19, 2010 at 12:22 PM

    My 20-year old is a Facebook friend at her request, with this reasoning: "Dad, I have nothing to hide." As I am learning, privacy goes way beyond identify theft issues. I am not sure I want to know all of my kid's innocent thoughts and musings. Now, how do I tell her that I want to drop her as a friend? I know: I’ll send her an e-mail through Facebook.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maurey PierceJune 23, 2010 at 6:16 PM

    I know other parents who feel the same way Jim does - they don't WANT to know everything. Kids need to have some secrets from their parents. Sneaking around is part of growing up, isn't it?

    I have a 12-year-old boy in my life, and when he joins Facebook, I'll probably friend him ... for now. Because at this point, he'd be OK with it. In a few years, though, he'd probably be mortified to have his "dorky stepmom" as a friend.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)