Embarrassing My Children on Facebook

When I was a senior in high school, we were each asked to write a short statement to be included in the yearbook under our photo. I took that opportunity to first thank my family for their love and support. Once that obligatory ask was complete, I used the rest of the allotted space to publically announce my undying love for my boyfriend and then to quote Oprah.

As you may have guessed, I get a little embarrassed when I look back at that. I try to console myself by rationalizing that I was only 18 and it could have been much, much worse.

So why do I share this little teenage cautionary tale? In the case of my yearbook, it’s really not that big a deal. After all, it’s not as if everyone I meet is going to ask to see my old yearbook and thereby have exposure to what I was doing and thinking about as a teenager. But, nowadays, we do have a way to see what everyone is doing and thinking about as a teenager, and much younger …enter Facebook.

My oldest child is three. He can’t read. He can’t type. He doesn’t have an email address, any usernames, or passwords. Yet, he is plastered all over Facebook.

His experience with Facebook began almost the second he was born, with a disgusting picture of him taken immediately after being surgically removed from my uterus. Since that moment, it has pretty much not stopped. From his first professional photos, to some shots from a birthday party last week, it seems like a huge chunk of his life has been recorded on Facebook. He has been tagged as me, my husband, and even his grandparents.

Though technically, he’s not on Facebook yet… I’m sure he will be soon. Just for fun though, can you imagine what would it be like for a three year old to have his own profile? I can see his status updates now:

“ Just went poo-poo in the potty! Looks like I’m getting some bubble gum”

“Sooo tired after a long day at the pool. Even though I’m exhausted, I’m still gonna throw a big hit before naptime, just out of principle. ”

“Anyone up for a last minute playdate? I gotta get out of the house. My parents are driving me crazy!”

But, all kidding aside, besides the obvious illiteracy issue, there is a good reason why children shouldn’t be announcing their every thought to the world. It’s because they aren’t yet wise enough to discern what to say and what to hold back. They don’t yet know who they are or what they truly believe.

I’m in my mid- thirties and I still look back on things I said a few years ago and shudder over how misinformed or naïve they were (I remember during my first pregnancy insisting that my children would absolutely not see a single moment of television before their second birthday! HA!!! Caillou is like a 3rd son in my house!)

But the difference between my children and me is still almost thirty years. Thirty years of life, of mistakes, of things I’ve said that I wish I could take back, comments that were hurtful, jokes made at someone else’s expense, and statements that revealed my ignorance. Even being as old and wrinkled as I am, I am aware that I still have a lot of growing to do and a lot of wisdom still to obtain. But besides the thirty years, the big difference between my sons and me is that I was blessed enough  to be born before the age of Facebook. I was lucky enough to have my ridiculous musings confined to a 3-sentence limit on a yearbook page. My sweet children however, have a much more challenging situation in front of them.

For the first time in human history, it is conceivably possible that the key moments of an average person’s life and their reactions to them may be recorded. What will this electronic record realistically mean for my children? Will their future girlfriends, college admissions board, or potential bosses see these things? Will this virtual trail of information follow them forever? Maybe not…maybe technology will
have solved this obvious problem by then. But, what if it hasn’t?

The Book of Proverbs says, “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue” I’m no pastor, but if I had to make this applicable, it would read, “Hey kids, if you just refrain from posting your every thought on Facebook, then people will think your much smarter than you actually are”

My goal is to make my children into wise (and potty trained) men. I know it may take me quite a while (on both fronts) but maybe in the meantime, I’m just supposed to keep them out of the spotlight and let them have all their experimental mistakes and experiences of childhood in private, not on the world wide web. And to be clear, I’m not so worried about the cute pictures of my toddlers that I, as their mother, am
editing and posting of them. It’s the thought of what’s coming 4 or 5 years from now when my kids are using their I-Pod touch (or whatever insane technology they’ll have by then) to update their own status and control their own communications. I hope I don’t sound too preachy about all this. I certainly don’t have the answer to all these questions about privacy or about how I plan to handle the Facebook issue as
my children get older (I could certainly claim that I will ban it completely but I can’t help hearing echoes of my ridiculous “No-TV pronouncement!”)

After all, I really like Facebook! I think it’s a lot of fun and I’m grateful for the community and communication tools it provides. I’m just not sure that in the end I won’t regret all the exposure I’m giving my children. I have a few friends who’ve “Just said ‘No’ to Facebook” and I wonder if perhaps I would be a better mother if I logged-out more and allowed them the freedom to grow-up in private, without the ever present updating newsfeed recording their every youthful misstep.

So although I’m not sure what I will do, I know that as I approach the future I have a lot to think about. I guess all I can really say on the record is this… “When I look into the future, It’s so bright, it burns my eyes” –Oprah Winfrey, (As quoted in my senior yearbook)

*****

Kirsten Dunlap can’t wait to find out what she’s going to be when she grows up, but she hopes it somehow involves writing. In the meantime, she enjoys driving around Scottsdale looking for large construction vehicles and any sort of Lightning McQueen- endorsed merchandise with her two boys. She is so grateful to be married to a wonderful man who is not only ridiculously handsome, but agrees that an occasional moms-night- out is absolutely essential! Kirsten has a degree in journalism and before she was promoted to “mommy”, she worked in television news as a reporter and an anchor. She worked internationally as a foreign correspondent intern for the government of Finland. Kirsten and her reporting have been featured nationally on CNN.