How to Friend Mom, Dad, and the Boss on Facebook...Safely
Oh no! Your mom just joined Facebook and what's even worse, she wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see - and you might not be entirely comfortable with that. What's to be done?
The Big Question: Should You Bare it All Online?
It's still up for debate how much personal information you should share with others on your Facebook profile. Some people would argue that the time for us to hide behind our masks is over. If we're professional, good employees at work and good sons and daughters at home, it shouldn't matter so much if a friend tags us in a photo which shows us tipping back beers at the weekend party. The fact is, everyone has a personal life and it shouldn't matter who sees it.
Others would say that those are precisely the sorts of photos that make it dangerous to use online social networks like Facebook for both personal and business networking. "Don't friend the boss," they would argue. It's just too risky.
Sharing Some Things, Not Others
The issue isn't really that black and white, though. You may feel it's OK for your colleagues to see some of your Facebook photos (like those from the conference you attended), but not others (like those from the party). You also may be a little uncomfortable with the boss reading your wall posts, especially if your friends have an odd sense of humor at times.
If you're not ready to expose everything about you to anyone who asks to be your online friend, it's time you learned how to use Facebook's friend lists.
A little over a year ago, Facebook launched a new feature called "Friend Lists." With lists, you can create groups of friends on Facebook, separating work from family and close friends. It's simple to use, but it's definitely an underutilized feature. In fact, most of the people who spend their days "Facebooking," never seem to take the time to worry about who's seeing what...until it's too late.
But now, as more older generations are going online and joining social networks, the "Should I Friend Mom/Dad/Boss?" issue is becoming more prevalent than ever.
How To Use Friend Lists
To get started with Facebook Lists, you first need to build one. You can do this from your Friends page. (Click "Friends" in the blue bar at the top). On the left side of the page, click the button "Make a New List." Give it a title.
Now you'll have the option to add your friends to the list. You can either start typing in names one by one or click on "Select Multiple Friends" to add several people to the list all at once. (To add people, just click on their photos.) When you're finished, click the "Save List" button at the bottom.
Once you have some lists created, it's time to figure out who gets to see what. To edit your privacy settings, go to "Settings" at the top-right of the screen next to the search box. When you hover your mouse over the link, you'll see a menu appear; click "Privacy Settings"on this menu. On the following page, click "Profile," the top choice in the list of options.
On the profile privacy page, you have the option of customizing exactly who gets to see what. You can modify the following areas: Profile, Basic Info, Personal Info, Status Updates, Photos Tagged of You, Videos Tagged of You, Friends, Wall Posts, Education Info, and Work Info. If you're unsure of what any of those things are, click the "?" next to the item to read a definition.
Using the drop-down boxes, you can customize who gets to see your info: "Only Friends," "Friends of Friends," or "My Network of Friends." To lock down your profile to friends only, you could set all these to "only friends." But since you have now created specialized lists, you'll want to use these instead.
To do so, click the fourth option from the drop-down box: "Customize." From here, you can add lists of people who should NOT be able to see this part of your profile. For example, if you wanted to block a list of work colleagues or those in your family from seeing your status updates, you could do so here - just type the name of your list in the box "Except these people" and save your changes.
Note: you can also block certain people individually just by typing in their names, but given the ever-growing number of Facebook users, you're probably going to need a Friend List at some point. We recommend biting the bullet and creating your lists now instead of treating everyone as a one-off.
After you've saved your changes, you're done. You'll have your privacy back without having to change the way you and your friends use Facebook. Of course, keep in mind that nothing is foolproof - determined hackers can gain access to your account as can anyone who guesses your password....so maybe you shouldn't use your dog's name.
When lists are finally in place, you can assign new friends to a list right when you're accepting their friend request - just look for the option "Add to Friend List" before you click "Accept."
It may seem like quite a bit of work to set up, but you'll thank yourself for doing this later...like every Monday morning when you go back to work after a great weekend...or the next time you need to borrow money from mom and dad. You get the idea. Better safe than sorry.
Image Credit: canyonjam
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Here's my take:
http://ideasandthoughts.org/2008/12/02/why-parents-should-have-facebook-accounts/
A How-To Guide on Facebook Friend Lists (believe it or not, a lot of people don't know how to do this)
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 30, 2009 8:28 AM
Yeah, I used this from the get go when they started it. I have a "limited profile" list. But you bring up some ither good points, Sarah. I may want to have a little more granular control for coworkers.
Social communities are great for promotional reasons so in that reguard is it worth getting busted for craziness? On the other hand do people really care. Some people can react but we are all strange and untill we can tell our selves that perhaps the world will never change.
Great info Sarah, really smart way to manage our many lives.
Nice writeup, valuable information... and what it says to me is that FB has a lot to learn about usability. There's no way you can expect people to say "Oh hey, I can friend family and the boss... I'll create lists, then choose a second level option in the preferences dialog that I've probably never visited... " Sigh.
While the post here makes it dead simple to DO all of that, people just WON'T. They'll never know it exists or if they do know lists exist, they'll never make the connection between that and the Customize option buried in some other section of the site. Why not simply give people a more obvious way to pop friends in common groups like friends, work, family?
Being upfront about it is easier than agonizing about who to add. If I like you and you are family or friend, you can be a Facebook friend. If I have worked with you and I can admit it without being ashamed of your performance, you can be a Linked-In contact. If I'm interested in what you have to say, I'll add you on Friendfeed or Identica. Simple isn't it ? Even simpler : don't fragment your audience - you can't please everyone and be yourself at the same time. Let parts of your audience be pissed off from time to time - it makes for interesting discussions and it lets you be authentic. And if you feel ashamed about some parts of your personality, then that is what you need to adjust - not your friends lists.
Of course, that method is only relevant for individuals as themselves. Do separate your company from your person. Even if you are a one-person company, you are managing two persona not one. Your company and yourself have different social networks - there may be some overlap and percolation, but you ha
Funny. My mom just joined Facebook a couple days ago. The progress towards sharing all details of our life is inevitable. The real problem is that most kids can not learn appropriate behavior from their parents since their parents have not made the mistakes of sharing this type of too much information on their own. Most likely, this will be a case where the kids can teach their parents and I think that is a cool thing for kids. How long until sensors and web monitoring can just sense what is important to use and updates our status automatically? Some things would be simple, like if you are reading news like CNN, you can update your status with feeling depressed, or if you are playing video games you can update it with happily absent minded. We should connect on Facebook also by the way. Happy Super Bowl weekend!
Posted by: harleycw.pip.verisignlabs.com
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January 30, 2009 10:16 AM
We need this type of post somewhere on the interwebs every 6 months. Really great post Sarah
My mom asked me once about signing up an account and to be friends. I completely changed the subject and she has since forgotten. I don't want to be FB friends with my parents anytime soon.
Wow, great minds think alike - I posted a very similar post in my blog this morning addressing the same issue, and solving it that same way. It's nice to see validation from somewhere else!
A great post with valuable info. A newby to FB, I wasn't aware of this option. I was having difficulty with a couple of friend requests and knowing this feature, which I hadn't noticed, helps resolve the dilemma!
Some excellent comments, too.
That was very helpful. If I tried to decline an invitation from my mother she'd be really sad. But then again if she saw some of the stuff I post on FB she'd be depressed she raised a son like me.
So I guess the only way is to block some of the content for her and hope she doesn't notice/think it's her fault (she started using the internet a little over month ago so I think I'm safe for now).
I've been doing this for quite some time with a list I titled "Acquaintances". It works fairly well. Once I know a person isn't going to misuse my details, I'll remove them from the list.
Interestingly, most of the people on my friends list don't know how to properly use this feature, and they're often left explaining their incriminating photos to their folks.
These lists are also handy when your kid friends you. It's great being your kid's friend because you can monitor their page - but sometime your friends leave comments you'd rather they didn't see.
This is all well and good, but I think there should be options when posting photos and other potentially focussed stuff to FB.
I think they need options like Flickr where you can mark images, updates etc. for public view or only for friends, only family or both or private.
There are family photos that my mates aren't interested in or I don't want them to see, there's also gettin' messy photos that I only want certain friends to see.
A great tip for facebook fanatic like me ;)
who uses facebook but haven't seen facebook in full throttle.
I have the opposite problem. I'm a mom of a 13 year old. In our family, we have a rule that he needs to "Friend" me until he's 16 years old. (Harsh, I know. But that's how it goes. I need to know that he's using the internet safely.) MY problem is that I don't want HIM to see my Profile or any stuff I post on my Wall! It's just not appropriate for him to see me being silly and/or dealing with adult stuff on my page.
I wish someone would write a "how-to" guide on that issue.
They don't seem to have the feature for every privacy setting. and as far as FB is concerned, you know never know when they screw up and bring everything out in the open for everyone. inspite of these privacy controls, one must have control over what one posts on the profile or the people that are added to the profile.
I have a problem. I am afraid of joining Facebook or finding my social activity by searching. I can’t keep my dignity of Father.
Pam - actually, from what you described, that's exactly what fits here. You can do the same types of lockdown, but exclude your son from the "allowed" content.
I had actually been wondering if, now with so many adults on Facebook, if Gen Y would actually jump ship and find a new social platform. I just wrote about this yesterday in
"Facebook: Will Teens Jump Ship with the Rapid Influx of Adults" at http://connectwithyourteens.blogspot.com/2009/02/facebook-will-teens-jump-ship-with.html and have gotten many comments with a wide range of thoughts. You offer an interesting alternative.
I think there is something lacking though.
For when you get tagged in someone's photo. You can either deny all of those to your group or allow to the group. I want it on individual pictures or at least albums. Some things are embarrassing only to certain types of people. Being tagged in your mom's baby pictures of you might be fine for family, friends and what not... but your boss? that new business acquaintance you are trying to sell to? Right now you either don't let them see any of the photos you are tagged in or you let them see it all, baby, drunk, official, professional, and everything in between. Better safe than sorry.
I don't feel sorry for anything that happens to anyone on Facebook. IF you get scammed. fired. outed by peers, whatever, you have it coming.
Facebook = Idiocracy.
Who else thinks that an improved version of the Facebook friend list feature should have the ability to group friends into circles of open communication that include what each other have contributed to your wall or tagged photos, but not the elements contributed by friends outside the group?
In other words, your work colleagues, friended into a "work" friend list, would see the postings made by each other, but not writing on your wall or photos of you tagged by anyone not in the "work" group.
Same thing with online organizations you join or fan groups, etc.
While not a trivial revision to the FB framework, this sort of control is certainly doable.
I think this feature would both help privacy, as well as encourage more users of FB, particularly among the original users who started five years ago at school, and are now finding their lives more segmented between pre-college and post-college friends; fun-time friends and professional work friends; friends their own age, and older friends who might someday be their boss or write them a professional recommendation.
Managing your online persona and reputation becomes increasingly important as online and offline worlds become extensions and reflections of each other.
Thoughts?
I think FB Aficionado's suggestion would be a great approach to this whole thing!
Keeping everyone safer is better! If we can manage to keep some of our personal stuff private and still join social networking sites - great!
Although this is good, a better method is to specify at the time you publish an item on facebook who can view that item. For example a status update that says you're going to a club would be visible to buddies you specify but not your family. Also, when someone tags a photo of you, it would be great if you receive a message first where you can then specify who can view this photo as opposed to whether to approve the tag request or not.
"Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see"
Mom, Dad and the boss are NOT the whole world! They are 3 fairly important people in your life. They also happen to be 3 people you can probably actually trust not to take advantage of you or rip you off!
The whole world is the whole world, and if you are on Facebook you have already exposed your private life.
The sooner people figure out that nothing should go on the internet that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the paper, the better.
Thanks for explaining! This will come in handy.
OMG. Just the info I've been looking for. THX, Sarah!
I am setup right now so only a specific group of friends can post or see post. But I would like to open up more for posting but need more control. Isn't the next logical step for a post from a particular Friend List can only be seen by others in that List and I can see all of them...this makes so much sense - am I missing something?
Thanks for this in depth "tutorial"; I'm new to facebook and I appreciate all teh lessons I can get!