If the daughter had any brains at all, to not rock the boat with her mom, she could setup another account with an anonymous name and email. EASY.
The big difference is that people didn’t hear what was being said at the other end. I’m becoming concerned not necessarily for the privacy of the daughter we’re talking about, but her friends, and I’m going back on my previous opinion to one of ‘not creepy, but potentially very damaging’.
No.
Hmmm, the ways Facebook functions, and the way people use it, doesn’t really work well with people doing that. The only person I know who uses a pseudonym there is a university lecturer, and he can still be found if you search for his email address and he’s still listed as staff of that uni. He just doesn’t want every undergraduate trying to add him as a friend, that’s all.
Do you mean Lori Drew? She’s not in prison.
With the daughter being under 18 (probably about 15), I guess I don’t see this as a huge problem. Being added as a friend on Facebook may be enough to keep up with the kid, but since one can now choose what friends see, it is not the same as having password access.
I was emphatically not helicopter-parented as a teen, and as a teen I’m sure I would have hated this, but that was a different time and place and itself a far from perfect world. Unfortunately part of teaching your kids not to be complete idiots is often watching them fairly closely while they learn. There are ample opportunities for newby idiot mistakes on social networking sites. Also, we don’t have any information about this girl’s previous history of responsible or irresponsible behavior. If she’s been getting calls at home from 23 year old guys who think she’s 19, or sneaking out at night, or skippng school, I can totally see putting the kibosh on that.
I think the mom is way overdoing it, and like the comments of Duck Duck Goose and Troy McClure SF the best.
However, after reading many threads in which she has participated, I firmly believe that WhyNot gives the best parenting advice on the SDMB, so I will probably reexamine my own views a bit in light of her comments.
My own two cents: the one thing I will say in the mother’s favor is that at least she is open with her daughter about the fact that she is doing that level of monitoring. Secret spying (the kind my mother did - oh no she didn’t, she “accidentally” read my diary thinking it was a different book) is far worse because then the bond of trust is completely broken in both directions.
My son is a little young for such issues but not much (age 10). He is the original Mr. Good Sense and Caution so what we do with him may not be the best approach for all kids. However, unless he undergoes some kind of personality change as adolescence hits (always possible!), my plan at some point is to point to a drawer in his closet that has a lock on it, hand him the key and say “here - everyone needs their privacy and if you have anything you want to keep to yourself, this is where it should go. The key is yours. End of discussion, unless we see warning signs like slipping grades, indication of drug/alcohol abuse, etc. If that happens we’ll talk.”
I guess I’ll just have to have my own Facebook profile when the time comes and mark him as a friend. Hell. What a time-sink. I don’t WANT a Facebook profile. But anything for the kid. Except getting on line pretending to be him.
The thing about facebook is that you can’t just become a friend, you have to make a request to the person, and they have to accept the request. Then you become listed as one of their friends, which all their other friends can see. Thinking back to when I was a teenager, I would rather have had my mom log in as me from time to time than have her listed as one of my friends…that would have made me feel like a huge dork.
You’d be surprised who all those friends also have listed as their own friends, bearing in mind the option of limited profiles. I’ve got my mum as a friend on Facebook, but theoretically this could mean that she has access to nothing more than is in her handwritten phone book.
I had a huge fight with my parents when I was 15 and first started using email. My dad wanted my Hotmail password. I was furious because I’d never done anything to merit the distrust of my parents (up until that point); my dad argued that if I didn’t have anything to hide I shouldn’t have a problem with him having my password. In the end he gave up.
Not having kids myself, my gut reaction to the situation described in the OP is that the mother is being overbearing, but I did some pretty stupid things on the Internet when I was 15 (over ten years ago). On the other hand, it did turn out to be a phase which I grew out of, none the worse for the wear and perhaps even having learned a few things about myself.
I think there are ways to keep your kids out of trouble other than demanding access to their personal accounts.
I completely agree with DDG on this one.
I’m 25, only a year older than her oldest child, and I managed to learn about how to be “safe” on the internet without having my mother hold my hand or monitor my activities online. She did, however, give me some pretty clear guidelines, like not friending every person who wanted to talk to me and not giving out personal information like where I lived to strangers on the internet. My mom actually did some parenting during my earlier years that provided me with sound enough judgment that, during my high school years, I didn’t need to be supervised on the internet. I didn’t bully people or try to find new boyfriends online, and I knew better than to do these things. Parents should be doing a good enough job that, by the time their kid is in high school, they should trust their kids enough to not have to babysit their online activities. If the kid were younger, supervision would be something that would be a good idea and decreased as they got older as a show of trust and the capability of the kid being capable of handling their own business online without doing something stupid.
Adding yourself as a “friend” on your kids social networking accounts is enough if you’re concerned with the content of their page. You can keep up with that and not be completely involved in their personal account.
Yeah, but meeting the friends is one thing. This is more like…hanging out with them and knowing their in jokes and stuff–that’s a little odd.
Without knowing the behavior of the child in question, I don’t think it’s fair to judge the mother. The mother isn’t sneaking in - she made it a condition of signing up, the child accepted the condition. It’s between them. If the kid knows that the mom could sign on at any time, then she just might not do something stupid like put in her real name, location, school, etc which I HAVE seen done by allegedly savvy, intelligent kids. They think, “It can’t happen to me”. That’s why kids have parents and aren’t out living in their own apartments. In general, they aren’t savvy or wise - they’re impulsive and naive - even the bright ones. And maybe this young lady has done things to make her mother distrust her. A 15 year old (which is typically what age a child is entering sophomore year in the fall, so I’m assuming that’s the child’s age) is quite capable of doing all sorts of things that would make your average mother’s head spin. I’ve done several 360’s due to my daughters at various times and they’re both basically good, reasonably sane and intelligent kids.
I would draw the line at impersonating the child online, though. I’ve been on the computer when one of them has left their AIM on and I"ll just type in quickly, if the other person keeps messaging, that it’s mom and she’s not around. Otherwise it would be dishonest and disrespectful to the other person, but I’d never say never when it comes to raising kids. Sometimes you just do what you have to.
Perfectly reasonable.
Child is a minor.
Mom and Dad presumably pay for the computer and internet bills.
The arrangement was clear up front.
Sixteen year olds in our society make stupid choices. Responsible parents try and make sure that the stupid choices are limited to downloading porn and not irresponsible levels of drinking/drugs/sex - or that they are there to catch them if they do fall. Its easier to do that when you know who their friends are and what they are all talking about.
Having passwords isn’t odd or creepy. Sometimes kids need the threat of a parent watching/listening to tone down their rhetoric.
Logging on AS her is kind of creepy.
But that’s the point of having the password, so you can log on. What else would you do with it? It’s not the mom’s fault that Facebook apparently has a feature that tells you when the person is online…that, she can’t do anything about.
Ah. She has been indicted, though, which is probably what stuck in my mind as “in prison”.
Do you really see yourself entirely as a product of your parent’s parenting? There are six in my family, and me you could have trusted on the internet but there are a few of my siblings that had much weaker judgment.
I don’t think this qualifies as helicopter parenting, and I also don’t see anything wrong with Mom having the password - kid knows this, it was a condition of signing up. Kid knows Mom can log in anytime, so she’d better keep personal private stuff off the web. Kid had the option of not having a Facebook page, so if it was such an imposition she could have simply not had a profile. To me, this is an example of responsible parenting. I would hope Mom is just checking to see if things are on the level - if she’s pouring over every e-mail and pretending to be the kid, that’s foul.
I do agree that Facebook is pretty safe, though.
I grew up old school - my parents were loving but strict, I occasionally got an ass whuppin’, and I was under no assumptions that I had privacy. At the same time, though, I knew that I had earned the trust of my parents and it was quite unlikely that they’d pull out my bottom bureau drawer and look under the panel for my secret porn stash. But if there was a funky smell in my room, someone was going in to see what it was.
Oh, just to add, here are some classic examples that some of my colleagues have shared with me:
- a mom shadowing her daughter for a week - going to class, etc.
- a parent calling to dispute a grade (thank God for FERPA)
- a dad who called a prof to ask for a reference for their son/daughter
Thank God I teach grad students. Occasionally a parent will visit our program with their child, but I see that as being a concerned parent, not helicoptering. Especially if the student is the one asking questions, etc. 9 times out of 10 the parent is almost apologetic about being there, which suggests to me that they know their boundaries.
When I was a hall director I had two students that did not get along. They were dating at one point but broke up in an ugly way. So the mom came to campus and stayed in the dorm. Technically, people who were not residents of the hall could not stay longer than three days, but it wasn’t the kind of thing we went looking for. Plenty of kids had their siblings, SOs, etc. stay for a few days. We just asked that they give us a form so we knew that someone else was in the room, and that the roomie agreed.
So I see Mom on occasion, but then I’m seeing her in the lounge watching movies with the other kids, playing pool, etc. One night I get a harried knock on my door. It’s the mom, claiming that the ex-BF is threatening her daughter. I investigate and discover that daughter and ex-BF had words, yes, but mom was instigating the situation by calling the ex-BF and accusing him of all kinds of stuff. I also find out that roomie was coerced into signing the form, and really didn’t want the mom staying in the room. And the topper was that the daughter didn’t want her mom around, either.
When I found this out I let Mom know that if she wanted to stay any longer in the building she’d have to enroll in classes next quarter. She got the message and buggered off. Sheesh!
10th grade? This kid is 15 or 16. I find the behavior of the mother to be rather odd. Passwords do not get shared. Well, I gave my parents the password to my AOL account because we accidentally set it up as the admin account, but this was after I stopped using it anyway.
I cannot fathom having asked my parents permission to do anything on the internet that did not require one of their credit cards. This was also the case with all of my peers, AFAIK. Granted this was the mid 90s, so most parents weren’t so computer savvy, and we hadn’t had all the scares about how horrible and evil and dangerous the internet is :rolleyes:.
Maybe the child is disturbed or something and needs constant monitoring. Then I could understand this. But a normal 10th grader? In some states kids can drive at this age. Most places I’ve lived have had public libraries that have freely available unsupervised internet access. If Mom freaks about about the evil internet then the kid can go there. No car? Many places there are buses. Not allowed out of the house? Then I think there is a bigger story here.