Wednesday, December 22, 2010

4 Letter Words and Facebook

I'm not going to put them here, even tho I can, but yes, you know the ones I'm talking about!

My oldest son has a Facebook page. One of his many rules is that his friends have to be my friends. If they will not friend me they get removed from his friends. I also can at anytime remove his friends that are being inappropriate. These "friends" have sometimes even been relatives! Inappropriate can be many things, but the one that bothers me the most is the 4 letter words. (The self portraits are a very close 2nd!)

Here's my opinion on 4 letter words. They are words. Just words. BUT, because in most of society thay are considered inappropriate, and sometimes offensive, this is what I must teach my children. I fully believe that these words have a place and sometimes an F-bomb is the only way to fully get your point or proper emotion across. Even tho I think they have a place, I don't think that place is on Facebook. I tell my son that just because you CAN put whatever words you want to in your status doesn't mean you SHOULD. Just because your mother isn't going to see it, doesn't mean the rest of us do want to see it. I understand sometimes you get fired up and you might be having a bad day and want to vent thru Facebook, I've been known to do this myself, but you don't have to write every 4 letter word you know. Those words truly do offend and upset some people.

My son is a teenager now and I have less and less control over his influences and exposure the older he gets. This is one thing I have control over and I will exercises that control to the fullest! I think a lot of parents need to become educated on Facebook. You don't have to have a computer to Facebook. All you need is a cell phone, and most teenagers, and younger, have cell phones. I wonder where the parents of these 12 and 13 year olds who are talking about getting high and drunk are. I feel sorry for these kids and at the same time don't want my son exposed to that and to think it is cool. So I delete them, from his list. I still keep these kids as my friends so I can kinda keep up with who is hanging out with who and who is doing what. I just have to hope that I've equipped my son with the proper tools to make the proper decisions. I will never stop parenting my kids tho. I can see myself still giving him a piece of my mind when he's grown. I'm sure he will love it then as much as he loves it now, but it's just because I love him so much!

2 comments:

  1. You are an outstanding mom. We all love you :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. If only those other moms looked at facebook to see what their kids are writing....but maybe they don't really care. My sister monitors her kids and deletes friends just like you. When mine is old enough for facebook I will do the same. I really wish other moms were as vigilent at monitoring their kids facebook pages....words and pictures....uggg!!!

    ReplyDelete