Like a chaperone at a high school dance. . .

My blackberry buzzed somewhere between Dupont Circle and Woodley Park on Thursday morning as I received an e-mail notifying me that my Mother had made a suggestion that I add my father as a "friend" on facebook. I'm sure I'm NOT the first to experience the full-family social networking, but it doesn't make me any more okay with it. Granted, I've already taken precautions with my profile-- I've turned off all broadcasts, I've turned off the wall, and I've limited the number of people who can search me. But there's something odd to me about having my Mom & Dad on facebook. I don't mind them seeing my game day rants about poor football performances, nor do I have any problem with them viewing my pictures or reading my cranky late-night-at-the-office status messages, but there is just something about it that I find odd.

My parents have ALWAYS been tech-savy. My dad was on the internet when all there was was compuserve and text-based message boards accessed using MS-DOS. He had a "portable" compaq computer roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase which my brother and I used to successfully conquer Math Blaster and the first version of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. We had a cable modem as soon as they were available in the boonies, and they rigged wireless internet throughout the house faster than you can say linksys. They talk to my nephew across the country on a webcam, and they've got more cables wired into their new house than most office buildings.

Lucky for me during college, they never got in to InstantMessager or bothered with Friendster, MySpace, or even LinkdIn (though I'm probably wrong on that one). I called them once a week, e-mailed occasionally, but their virtual presence was relatively minimal. But now they have iPhones, macbooks, and facebook profiles. When I check status updates from my blackberry, I can see my mother's musings or learn my father's evening plans. My mom spent her entire visit to see my nephew taking and uploading pictures with her iPhone. My brother started chatting with me this afternoon on FB to try and determine how to launch a war against the adult infiltration of facebook.

Don't get me wrong, why shouldn't parents and other adults be able to reap the same reconnecting benefits we all enjoy about facebook. We all enjoy the random friend request from your childhood neighbor or the congratulatory message from the roommate you've lost touch with. I'm just weirded out knowing how much I stalk people on facebook and wonder if my mom and dad are now doing the same to me and my friends. And then there's the fact that the ever-growing facebook population that makes me wonder if we'll reach a point where parents and children communicate by Facebook message, notifying eachother of locations or curfew changes via status message. Who'll need chaperones if apple invents an iPhone app that tweens carry with them while their parents wait at home watching on the webcam?

After drafting this post last week, I ran across a CNN.com article yesterday discussing the trend among tweens lying about their age and bucking the membership agreements for social networking sites: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/kids.social.networks/index.html. Perhaps there's some real truth to my predictions. . . Frightening.