Youngsters not happy oldies going online
The following article originally appeared on January 29, 2008 at this now rotted link http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23125981-5014239,00.html. I have archived the text of the article because I originally linked to it from my post For the Young there is no future:
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Get off my webz ... youngsters aren't happy their parents are starting to use social networking websites / Shannon Morris
Youngsters on the internet / Shannon Morris
THE older generations are moving in on the hi-tech, online world and the under-30s are not impressed.
Scott Seigal was awakened one morning by a mobile phone text message.
It was from his girlfriend's mother.
His friends' parents have posted greetings on his MySpace page for all the world to see.
And his 72-year-old grandmother sends him online instant messages every day so they can better stay in touch while he is at university.
"It's nice that adults know some things,'' says Seigal, 18.
He especially likes instant messaging with his grandmother because he is "not a huge talker on the phone".
Increasingly, however, he and other young people are feeling uncomfortable about their elders encroaching on what many young adults and teenagers consider their technological space.
Long gone are the days when the average middle-aged adult did well to simply work a computer.
Now adults have Gmail, upload videos on YouTube, and show off the latest hi-tech gadgets.
Young people have responded, as they always have, by searching out the latest way to stay ahead in the race for technological know-how and cool.
They use Twitter, which allows blogging from one's mobile phone or BlackBerry, or Hulu.com, a site where they can download videos and TV programs.
They customise their mobile phones with various faceplates and ringtones.
And sometimes, they find ways to exclude adults – using high-frequency ringtones that teenagers can hear but most adults cannot, for instance.
Nowhere are the technological wars more apparent than on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, which went from being student-oriented to allowing adults outside the college ranks to join.
Gary Rudman, a California-based youth market researcher, has heard the complaints.
He regularly interviews young people who think it is "creepy" when an older person – we are talking someone they know – asks to join their social network as a "friend".
It means, among other things, that they can view each others' profiles and what they and their friends post.
"It would be like a 40-year-old attending the school formal," Rudman says. "It just doesn't work."
It is a particular problem for image-conscious teenagers, says Eric Kuhn, a university student who has blogged about the etiquette of social networking.
He accepted his mum's invitation to be Facebook friends and has, in turn, become online friends with other adults she knows.
But so far, he says, his 16-year-old sister has declined to add their mother "because she thinks it is not cool".
Lakeshia Poole, 24, said: "My Facebook self has become a watered-down version of me."
Worried about older adults snooping around, she is now more careful about what she posts and has also made her profile private, so only her online friends can see it.
"It's something of a catch-22, because now I'm hidden from the people I would really like to connect with," she says.
Lauren Auster-Gussman, a university student, says it is particularly awkward when one of her parents' friends asks to join her social network.
She thinks Facebook should only be used by people younger than, say, 40.
"I mean, I'm in university," she says.
"There are bound to be at least a few drunken pictures of me on Facebook, and I don't need my parents' friends seeing them."
There are ways around the problem.
It is possible on some sites, for instance, to limit what someone can see on your profile, though some users think it is a bother to have to deal with that.
"That is the beauty of Facebook and other online social networks. If you want to only interact with your peers, then you can adjust the settings to only allow that," says Katie Jones, a university student who has studied ways prospective students use Facebook to contact students at colleges and universities they are interested in attending.
It is also possible to simply decline or ignore an adult's request to be an online friend.
Or adults could back off and only use social networking to contact their own peers.
But it is not always so easy to relinquish that control, especially for parents of teenagers, says Kathryn Montgomery, the author of Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce and Childhood in the Age of the Internet and mother of a 14-year-old.
"As parents, we have to figure out where to draw the line between encouraging and allowing our teens to have autonomy, to experience their separate culture, and when we need to monitor their use of media," says Montgomery, a professor of communication at American University.
She says it is especially important to help young people understand that social networking is often more public than they think.
Sometimes monitoring them is the best way to do that.
Sue Frownfelter, a 46-year-old mother, thinks it is less of an issue for parents who discover technology with – or even before – their children.
Among other things, she has a blog, uses Twitter and has a Chumby, a personal internet device that displays anything from news and weather to photos and eBay auctions.
Her children, aged nine and 11, begged her to allow them to have a MySpace page, because she does.
Instead, she suggested Imbee.com, a social networking site for children that allows parental monitoring.
"I can't imagine my life without technology. It has truly become an extension of who I am and who my family will likely be," Frownfelter says.
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