MANILA, Philippines – So you thought they could only embarrass you in person, like when your friends are visiting and they would show them your naked baby pictures, or that time they dressed you inappropriately for your gender. Maybe you shy away from having your mom flick off an invisible speck of dirt from your cheek while your crush is in a five-meter radius and could probably see everything.As children we always have a tendency to cringe when our parents are having fun at our expense, even if they don’t mean it that way. It might be dancing to Rihanna with your aunts at a family reunion, wearing “revealing” clothes (to you at least), or dragging you to take a picture of her with a celebrity. There was a time when social networking websites were the domain of the young people. It was quite inconceivable to see a parent or elderly relative make an account on Friendster or MySpace, and we found it safe to post pictures our parents wouldn’t exactly find proper. Now it’s not uncommon to see an invite from your mom, dad, aunt or their friends. You agonize over it for days—should you accept or ignore? Facebook is your turf, the one place in the cyberworld where you can be yourself with your select group of friends, in a setting both public and at the same time private. You really don’t need your parents to see what kind of hangover you had from your friend’s birthday party, as evidenced by the pictures where they tagged you. More and more parents are now joining Facebook and are adding up their children as contacts, that a website is solely dedicated to documenting the funny, the embarrassing and the too-much-information moments the kids have with their parents. With the tagline “Congratulations! Your parents just joined Facebook. Your life is officially over,” and entitled “Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook” (http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com), a new website allows one to post screenshots of kids’ moments with their parents. Created by web content producers Erika Brooks Adickman and Jeanne Leitenberg from Los Angeles, USA, all in good humor, the website’s featured screenshots are never boring, and is something we can all relate to. Sometimes there’s too much information going on, but mostly it’s just a peek into what is possibly every child’s relationship with their folks: Kids want their parents to behave like parents, and that is being serious and responsible and doesn’t know Facebook. Some posts are a reaction to their kid’s status message, such a girl’s status lifted from a song. Some would correct their children’s spelling and grammar for the rest of Facebook to see. Some get mad when they discover their kid deleted them from their contacts. For those whose parents are in their friends list, suddenly they can’t be who they are when they’re with friends. Status messages are well-thought about, and only “safe” pictures can be uploaded. Yes, it’s killing the buzz. But before you think of ways how to “unfriend” your parents, look at it as something that can be one of the things you have in common. Remember that they have their own friends, cliques, and private jokes. They were fun people before life caught up with them, and there’s really no reason not to be fun anymore just because they are now parents. Chill and relax, and go with the flow. |
