Facebook Stalking hits VERY Close to Home

So, I'm sure that the dedicated reader(s) of this blog (Hi Matt, myself, and our fantastic producer, Sarah!) already know my views on who should get a facebook. Now, an article in today's Globe and Mail is only affirming my views on the people (and aquatic birds) who shouldn't.

Indeed, parents have invaded facebook.

This is not to say that all parents should avoid the 30 million-strong social networking site. If Jon Stewart, father of almost three-year-old Nathan Thomas and adorable baby Maggie Rose, great. And if he wants to friend me, all the better.

But its sadly not fantastic celebrity parents that are jumping onto the parents-on-facebook bandwagon. And their intentions do not involve friending yours truly. Parents are using the site to keep a watchful eye on their reclusive teens and tweens, forcing their children to censor their online selves. A teenager fresh from a weekend kegger can no longer post: "I got so wasted I had a fistfight with a squirrel" on a friend's wall, and has to ask his or her friends not to tag the pictures of the hilarity that surely ensued from drunkenly fighting a bushy-tailed rodent. Think of the inconvenience!

Globe reporter Patrick White reports: "Jenna Bromberg used to trawl Facebook with all the inhibition of a sorority girl at a spring-break kegger. She exchanged bawdy messages with friends. She broadcasted that she “drinks well with others.” She posted boozy party pictures, one showing off her finest beer-bong form."

However, Jenna is not the only one whose trawling days are over. Snooping parents are getting a taste of their own, stalkerish, medicine - they have become stalkees by, you guessed it, their own kids. Those nurturers who lamented privacy settings in the past are suddenly putting their own e-walls up.

One parent, the hilariously cruelly named Ms. van der Spank says on the issue: "What I censor is some pictures that I don't want [my kids] to see, but will e-mail my friends for a good laugh – nothing naughty, just not for their eyes."

The picture that they put on the Globe's article is proof enough that all parents should evacuate their profiles immediately.




Truly terrifying. If my mom ever pops up from behind my wall (or newly added graffiti wall!) I will literally do as a Ms. Bromberg, a boozing Cornell student, threatened to do when she was faced with her mom joining the site: "I almost deactivated my entire account right there."

I've heard of parents living vicariously through their children, but this is just sad (and potentially incriminating).

To conclude, Facebook marry me, Jon.