Why are the natives still so restless about adult presence on Facebook? (“Natives” are, of course, the young adults and teens Facebook was originally designed for.) You’d think they would be accustomed to our presence and fully adjusted by now. But alas, they are not. They are sensing what feels to them like a takeover. And they may be right since 35-to-54-year-olds lead the Facebook influx with a 276% growth rate this year. The second fastest growing group is 55 and older. And coming in third is the 25-to-34-year-old age group. Many young folks continue to express discomfort and disdain about, not just our presence, but how we are present.

Take, for example, this description of the Facebook Group called “Parents are Ruining Facebook”:

I am pretty sure everyone is getting tired of mommy and daddy giving you a talk every time you say a “bad word” on your status. Facebook used to be a place we could express ourselves, and now it’s just a place for parents and family friends to spy on us and know everything that goes on in our life. I personally am tired of it, and my parents don’t even have facebooks! Join this group if you are tired of the sh--! Oh wait am I allowed to say that?

This group’s somewhat meager 308 members might not impress you considering the astronomical number of young people on Facebook. But when you take into account all of the other Facebook groups with similar themes,

Parents are now using Facebook. This is a problem

Parents are ruining Facebook for me

Parents are so Nosey

Parents Can’t Have Facebook

Parents Being On Facebook Sucks,

the commonality of this anti-adult sentiment is striking.

Forced Friendship

For younger kids just starting out on Facebook and other social networking sites, parental presence is an expected part of the experience. After all, their parents are likely already participating in the medium by the time they come to it. And as discussed in several posts and comments in this Family Connections group, many kids cannot participate unless they friend their parents.

Older teens and young adults, however, consider Facebook to be their domain… and they are mourning its expansion to include both younger kids and adults. My older children were just entering college when Facebook hit the cyber-scene. It was an exclusively college student network. In fact, you had to have a college or university email address to join up. This was so exciting to me because for my kids, having lived their childhoods in several places throughout the country, Facebook was a mechanism to reconnect with many of their friends in other locations. Also mine, like most kids their age, enjoyed Facebook as a place to share the college experience with their high school buddies who had dispersed in every direction after graduation.

Once the floodgates were opened, my older kids thought it “weird” when their little sister’s high school buddies asked to be friends. They felt awkward about this phenomenon. You can just imagine how they felt when their 55-year-old uncle suddenly appeared with a friend request!! Yikes! How do you say no to your beloved uncle? And how much torture must you endure when the aunt that you begrudgingly friend starts making disparaging remarks about your status statements or your pictures? This is just not the same Facebook experience!! Rotten In Denmark expresses this sentiment perfectly, in his letter to his Facebooking mother:

Dear Mom, I know I still hold a serious deficit for the head-first labor, the bed-wetting, the braces, the moody angst, college tuition and the time I made you take me to see ‘Problem Child 2’. But can I make it up to you without adding you on Facebook? I am not ready for you to see the genital references on my wall, the filthy verbing in my applications or my pictures tagged ‘TUESDAY-DRUNK-AGAIN.’ My heart breaks a little bit every time I click ‘ignore’….but I’m not going to stop clicking it. Love, Your Ungrateful Mike

From “Don’t Embarrass Me” to “Cooler Than Me”

Part of the problem may be that parents appear to be having more fun on Facebook than their children. Leslie Ventura, at UWire.com, laments her parent’s new mastery of the digital world:

While we wait for Conan O’Brien to come on, the volume on the television is lowered so my mother can hear herself shoot zombies on her favorite iPhone app. Still waiting for Conan, mom checks what movie is in her queue, has a conversation with relatives through Facebook Chat, updates her status on Twitter and downloads mp3s from indie music blogs – all via her MacBook. My mom is cooler than me.

Still, as put off as teens and the college set are about our infiltration, they are still devoted to Facebook as their medium of choice. Most have long abandoned MySpace and have never really taken to Twitter. So they are coping with the onslaught of adults and waiting for that new thing to come to the rescue. All they are asking is that we adults give them some space and allow them a courteous way to keep Grandma, Uncle Al and Aunty Em at bay. Is that too much to ask?

To friend or not to friend?

If you are still perplexed about whether or not to friend your child (young or adult), Dr. Elvira Aletta, clinical psycholgist, mother of two teens, and blogger at ExploreWhatsNext.com, offers a great list of considerations:

1. Begin with the premise that Internet access, including Facebook, is a privilege and a responsibility for all. In other words, be a good role model.

2. Educate yourself about Facebook. Join parents online who are also struggling with this topic. Common Sense Media is a good example.

3. Discuss becoming Facebook friends with your kid first, casually, face to face. You may need more than one talk.

4. Listen and think hard before making a unilateral decision one way or the other.

5. If your child asks to not be Facebook friends, take a deep breath and do not be offended. Respect.

6. If you don’t know your kid well enough that you need Facebook to bridge a gap in your relationship, you’ve got a bigger problem than being FB buds. Get to know your kid another way, not through Facebook.

7. If your child says, yes, let’s be friends: That does not give you license to stalk them. Respect the boundaries and do not abuse the privilege. If you have an older teen, every time a photo goes up of your kid at a party you didn’t know about, do not write on her wall and call her out. Talk it out in private. Resist the urge to ‘friend’ your kid’s real friends.

8. Whether or not you are friends on Facebook make sure you and your kid know the security issues on Facebook and the Internet at large. Facebook has settings that allow the user to control who sees their information including media sharing.

9. Be sure everyone understands the concerns regarding sexting, photo and media sharing, the permanent nature of electronic data, future access by college and job application reviewers, viral spread of personal info, etc.

10. Do they Know everyone on their Facebook friend list?

11. For you, the parents. By all means, open your own Facebook account, play around with it, connect with old friends, make new ones. It really is fun, it’s free and you can always opt out. Do it for you, not just to watch over your kid.

(http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/08/25/to-be-or-not-to-be-my-kids-friend-on-facebook/)