Facebook and parents


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warita200

Tai Youkai
Sempai
Recently I noticed, that my father has a FB account and my bro and sis are in his friends list. This freaked me out. I am not sure, if it was my father who requested the add or my siblings and to what extent that was voluntary. I mean, how can you possibly deny an add request from your parents.

Until now father hasnt tried to add me. Possible explanation is, that I altered my name on FB, so that maybe my father didnt find me, when he was looking for me (that is exactly the reason why I did that, because I dont want people to find me, I want to find them if I feel like it. I know it is selfish...... but I am not a big friend of FB in the first place, I feel so exposed and I have never been interested in marketing myself or my daily activities as many do with such a pleasure).

To come to the point, I think it is just a matter of time, before my father notices me in my sisters list and tries to add me.....


How do I tell my father, that I DONT WANT THAT?

PS: Parents shouldnt be modern and shouldnt have FB accounts. Sigh.....
 
just say so? or you could just block him and ask your siblings to do you a favour and ensure they dont tell him?
 
My Mom is on FB now and after first finding it obtrusive, I have gotten used to it. At first I was self editing my posts so that she wouldn't see some things, but now I just use the security settings to hide posts from her that I don't want her to see. It's not really that big a deal.
 
Meh to me it doesn't matter at all. Since for me, my mother had a FB account before I got mine. At first it was only for my family and friends I know offline, then it kind of grew into a gamming section for me. Besides from what I can guess he probably wants to be added since your faimly and nothing more. In any case I see nothing wrong with that, nor do I see parents using FaceBook a big deal either though.
 
Well, I see some problems with it. This way I cant even post about going out with my friends without my father knowing about it.

I just dont feel comfortable with my parents knowing about what I do, who my friends are and what kind of messages they leave at my FB profile page. I consider that private. I mean, if my father adds me to his friends list, I can just as well give him the password for my email account, it will be the same.

I suppose I could either try the privacy settings or simply say NO to my father in some acceptable manner as @Samthebear suggested. The problem I see with it is, that my bro and sis accepted the request, so then I will be the odd one who says no and it wont reflect well on me.
 
I can understand how you feel warita. My dad added me on facebook, and I added him back because I thought he would be hurt if I said no. Guess what, I'm the odd one out in my family, my brother and sister both blocked him
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Now as to whether or not adding your parents is a big deal, well that depends on your relationship with them. If you have a father who is a big dictator that is trying to run your life and is constantly criticizing you, chances are you don't want to be friends with him on facebook.
Not everyone has cool parents, and in those cases it would be a huge insult if their child doesn't add them back as a friend. Sounds silly I know, but its true. Luckily for me, my dad doesn't really understand facebook, and he barely uses it. He added all of my friends and hasn't seemed to have noticed that my brother and sister didn't add him back.
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In your case warita, I would wait until he adds you. Until then pretend as if he is not on facebook. And if he does add you, and you feel you can't tell him you don't want to be friends on facebook, just edit your privacy settings.
 
It's a tricky one, I feel it is very hard to refuse a friend request from your parent (or any other family member for that matter) without it coming across as offensive particularly if your siblings already accepted the request as is the case here. Now as to whether to accept the request or not and what are the likely consequences. The decision, and outcomes, will depend on how your parents use facebook. If it is used for innocent reasons i.e. to keep in touch with friends/trying a new thing then accepting will not be so bad. I mean even if your dad saw facebook as a new way to pass his time it is likely he would grow bored and stop logging on so frequently making this a bit of non-issue. However if your parent see facebook as a device to spy on you (be it your facebook activities or to gauge how often you are online) then that is more serious. If you suspect this is the real reason for joining facebook then a rejection of their friend request will be taken more offensively.

If you are unsure how to proceed I think the best thing is not to take any action and simply observe what your father is doing on facebook and see how he is responding to your siblings. It should become a bit clearer what his intentions are. By observing what he does then you can have a better idea what impact accepting or rejecting his request would be like. Ultimately though I would accept his request when it comes but don't initiate it yourself. This will give you time to prepare what to do and what privacy settings you may need should you become friends to him. Ah I sound a little paranoid but well I had a similar issue with my aunt Nadia and the first time I got a friends request from her I refused the request because I knew she would snoop (she did it to my sis already). But she didn't like that and actually brought this rejection up when I spoke to her next in Sudan. And she brought the fact that my sister accepted and I did not so that same point could well be held against you.
 
QUOTE (warita200 @ Feb 16 2011, 12:08 PM)Well, I see some problems with it. This way I cant even post about going out with my friends without my father knowing about it.


The image shows what you can do about that. The real problem is when other people post stuff on your wall that you don't want him to see. In which case you might have to block him. And the offending "friend" for that matter.
 

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QUOTE (doofus123 @ Feb 21 2011, 02:09 PM)I make a separate facebook account for families and relatives.

Thats the smartest and most ingenuous thing i've heard!
 
I think so too. I mean, what a wonderfull idea. But I think I should set up the account before my father notices the other, right?
 
Well if he ever ask why you have two accounts just state that one is for the FaceBook games that are on ther and the other is for family and friends. Heck that's sometimes the reason why some people make more than one FB account at times.
 
Or just honestly say that you have two accounts: One to keep in contact with family/relatives and another to keep in contact with friends/coworkers. There's nothing wrong with keeping the two aspect of your life separate and it actually makes a lot of sense logically (regardless of other concerns such as privacy or secrets being held from one or the other).
 
I have both my mom and dad in my facebook. Both of them know fully well what type of person I am and the amount of stupid decisions I make and how much I curse and crap. So they just don't say nothing about it.

But my uncle, who I live with, it's an extremely anal retentive person. So he added me to facebook, and I just left it hanging. I won't accept it nor deny it, simply because I don't feel like dealing with the crap and real life comments that come with it.
 
I also got my familly members on my facebook. For the simple reason "I got nothing to hide from them".

But then again, i am also smart enough not to put everything on my facebook page. And informed my friends not to post everything on my page
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