Communications and Media

Online social networking is becoming very common nowadays especially among the youth. There are many social networking websites to choose from like Friendster, Mypsace, Multiply and Flixster.  But among these sites, Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world with over a million members around the world.  The nice thing about of these networks is that they allow people to find people they know like former schoolmates while making new friends at the same time, sometimes through these old ones. Even family members and relatives join Facebook and get in touch with each other here.  However, there were times when these social networking can be dangerous because of online sexual predators who are looking for victims and the youth are more vulnerable to these dangers. In the Internet, anyone can exaggerate or create a different identity as they wish to attract more friends and it is here that many people are fooled because they easily believe what other people say online.  This is why parents subscribe in Facebook and become  friends  with their children  to protect them from these dangers that lurk online and I believe this is the right thing to do to keep their children safe.

Facebook was introduced in 2004 as a mere social networking system in Harvard University by Mark Zuckerberg and his friends Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz.  It was originally called  www.thefacebook.com.   The word  Facebook  was borrowed from the term used to describe a printed manual for students and faculty and is spelled as  Face Book.  The purpose of this publication was to help members of the academic community to get acquainted with one another and be kept up to date on what goes on in campus. The site Zuckerberg and his associates created was originally a personal project and in looking for a name to identify it, they  borrowed  the word  Face Book  and made it unique by joining the two words although in the beginning it was called  www.thefacebook.com  but they later dropped the  the  from the name of the site.  From Harvard, the network grew and Zuckerberg and his associates made it available to different schools and later on made it accessible to the general public.  What makes Facebook popular is that besides the creation of a profile and the ability to track and add friends, there are additional features that make it fun such as games where members can compete against one another or cooperate with each other like a virtual community.  There are discussion boards here where people something in common can gather and share points of view and  Instant Messaging or chat although there are no private or public chat rooms available in Facebook (Roeder, 2010).

Since then, Facebook has attracted over 400 million people ever since it made itself accessible to everybody.  Young people, particularly children and teenagers join these networks partly because they find it  cool  and it is a fun and convenient way in making new friends and staying in touch with old ones near or far although they have to be at least 13 years old to join Facebook.  But like other online social networks, there are risks involved, especially when meeting new people online since the youth are very eager to make new friends far and wide thanks to the wonders of the Internet. But sometimes they do not know of the dangers here because they are so excited to make new friends that they forget about it.  One of the dangers here is on the Internet, nobody knows who you are despite showing a picture and complete information of a certain person.  As mentioned before, the Internet is the place where anyone can pretend to be somebody else to get people to trust them.  They can do this by posting an impressive profile about themselves and will sometimes post attractive pictures but it is not them. When they chat with their victims, they will use words others want to hear to sound friendly top gain their trust.  There is no voice chat on the Internet so criminals can easily hide their identity under a false one and once they gain the trust of other people, they will victimize them when the time is right. This is why parents want to monitor their childrens online activities by becoming their  friends  in Facebook.

This practice has disadvantages.  Children feel the need for privacy even online. Online social networking allows them to create their own  world  separate from reality whenever they need to get away from the hassles they face every day in real life.  Some children feel that the idea of having their parents as part of their network is like their parents continuing to interfere with their life which makes children annoyed that their parent would even go so far to  follow  them online and be their  friend  just to monitor them.  This would make them more rebellious for they feel their parents are violating their space which is already too much since they tend to interfere in their lives that even extend online.  Needless to say, this might cause conflict in the family. One way to get around this is for the parent to sign up under a different name in Facebook and correspond with their children in their language to avoid suspicion.

However, this is not always true.  There are also advantages or positive aspects about parents being their children s  friends  in Facebook.  It will help children and parents to communicate each other well if children live far away from their parents such as living and studying abroad.  In addition, it can bring parents and children together since the children see their parents as a  friend  that is different from their role in the house when they see one another.  They can even play one of the many games in Facebook in a  friendly  competition or even help each other out in such games as Farmville, Mafia Wars or Caf World to name a few where they work together.  This could make the relationship between parents and children stronger.  By doing this, it will make the children more comfortable with their parents rather than make them think they will be monitoring them all the time online.  With their children at ease, parents can easily monitor who their children interact with though discreetly.  As the  friend  of their children, parents can check who their friends are and closely monitor their interaction, especially those who appear to be suspicious.

In an article published online at Tech Crunch, there was a news of a sex ring where the perpetrator used Facebook to attract victims by posing as a girl to attract boys by flirting with them and persuading them to send nude photos which he would later use to blackmail them into performing sexual acts with him which he would record on video for his personal pleasure and for blackmail (cited in Kincaid, 2009).  Although the offender was arrested and put in jail, this made everyone realize that Facebook and other social networking sites can be  dangerous  and there have been several reports of similar incidents in Facebook as well as in the other social networking sites.

Because of this apparent danger to the welfare of the youth, parents have taken it upon themselves to  follow  or  check on  their  children online by subscribing to Facebook and asking their children to add them as one of their  friends.  If we are to use the example of the sex offender in above article, this would not happen if parents are aware of who are their children interacting with and as the  friend  of their children, the children will be more inclined to listen to them since they will be communicating in the level of the children.

In conclusion, even though children should have their freedom of privacy, it is important for parents to monitor their activities in the social networking websites such as Facebook. This is mainly to protect them from online predators and prevent the development of deviant behaviors transmitted through the networks like those who teach children how to smoke, drink alcohol and even try drugs or even rebel against their parents and disrespect them.  This is natural because it is their duty to look after their chldren.  But at the same time, Facebook can also provide another source of bonding between parents and their children such as the games there and further strengthen their relationship rather than cause conflict within the family even though the parents are  friends  here.  In doing this, the youth can continue to have fun and not worry about any dangers that lurk out there since their  friends  are there to watch over them.