In order to keep their children safe a lot of parents don’t let them hang out with friends and restrict them in many possible ways. But a new study says mothers even have gone further – one in two parents admits they join Facebook just to monitor their children.
Are you Facebook friends with your children? If yes, think about why exactly did you sign on? According to the study conducted by the Education Database Online, half of parents join the social network only to track their children’s activities on the Internet. In fact, 43 percent of parents check their children’s profile pages daily and 31 percent do this four to five times every week. Education Database Online, created to help students find various educational opportunities and higher degree programs within the United States, only looked at mothers, without examining the fathers’ behavior on the web. The amount of American mothers who are on Facebook has increased greatly – from 50 percent in 2010, the percentage rose to 72 in 2012.
In modern, increasingly digital world, parents see no other way to monitor their children, so the Internet stalking is becoming an obvious and convenient solution to this problem. The report is very clear about that, only one percent of the mothers say they never look at their kids’ pages, statuses or pictures. So, if you are friends with your parents, you might watch what you are sharing. According to the statistics, mothers are mostly interested in their children’s status updates, with a total of 41 percent admitting it. 39 percent of them want to see what other people post on kids’ walls, and 29 percent look at the photos kids are tagged in.
The study shows a very interesting trend – younger children tend to be nicer to their parents. There are an estimated 7.5 million kids on Facebook who are 13 years old or younger. 65 percent of 13-year-olds will friend request their parents, while only 40 percent of 20-year-old users will do that. Another fact, reveled by the report is that often parents’ comments can be embarrassing for their kids. One in three children admit to being embarrassed by their parents’ activity on the social network, in fact, 30 percent say they would unfriend them if they could, of course.
As a whole, almost all, or 92 percent of parents who use Facebook, are friends with their kids. It seems that although parents try to behave like friends, they are actually stalking their children even in the free Internet space. If your mother is your Facebook friend, you’d rather be cautious about your activity than unfriending her, causing unnecessary parental anger.
