I Have 399 Facebook Friends & My Mother?

When Facebook began in 2004 it was designed for college students. It gave them a way to keep in touch and share information with other friends in college. By 2005 it opened up to high school students and in 2006 to the general populous. Now the fastest growing segments of Facebook’s 300 million active users are over 25 and more than half are out of college.

Now pastors, youth leaders, teachers, parents and even old Aunt Sally are all Facebook-aholics. So much for a public place for students to post private thoughts on any topic that enters their minds to an audience that will read those ramblings without getting panicked or engaging in interpretation.

So now those same students have new decisions to make that the previous generations never even contemplated, such as: do I accept the invitation to be friends with my mother? If I reject the invitation, will I get grounded? If I accept it, will I spend large amounts of time explaining things I said that did not even require the use of one tiny brain cell and which I don’t even remember writing? Wow, life is tough for this generation…huh?

I would like to offer some concepts for your consideration when addressing this topic with students and adults.

1.     Adults should respect the student’s privacy but not live in a delusional, disconnected world. This is a time for helping students become individuals capable of independent function but that does not mean they are not accountable. Parents, teachers, pastors and leaders need to be engaged in students’ lives.

2.     If the student/adult relationship is non-existent, then trying to connect through a social network platform is going to be misinterpreted. Help parents build transparent relationships with their child.

3.     If the only way a parent, teacher or leader can discover what is going on in the student’s life is through a social network then there are bigger problems than a rejected “friend request.” Encourage communication that does not involve a social network. Help them build foundational relationships.

4.     Biblical intergenerational relationships take time and effort. Building trust, confidence and transparency in relationships should be our goal as parents, leaders and students.

The real issue is not social networking; it simply serves as a diagnostic tool. Our challenge is to help parents and their children as well as students and their leaders grow and learn together.