Families Finding Mixed Feelings About Facebook

It used to be a dilemma only for college students.

But these days, as middle- and no-longer-middle-age people flock to Facebook, it's a question for the over-40 set, too: Sure, she's your mother. But is she your "friend"?

For 47-year-old Paul Yost, who's in the middle of three generations on the social networking site, the answer is unequivocally yes. His teenage daughters were the first in the family to join, and Yost followed. Then, "I got my mom on it, and her boyfriend, a number of people I graduated from high school with," he said.

Earlene Moore -- who goes by Earl -- encouraged her 37-year-old son to try it out. A 64-year-old respiratory therapist at Deaconess Medical Center, Moore is an enthusiastic supporter of the site as a way to keep in touch with her sisters and other family.

"I love Facebook. I can keep in touch with everybody," said Moore. "I'm a friend of my son's, and now I can see all of his friends who I haven't seen for years."

Once a hip online hangout restricted to college students, Facebook is developing a family vibe. In the last two years, the rate of new users older than 35 has exploded, growing at more than 10 times the rate among teenagers. There was a time when young people worried about being "friended" by their parents -- concerned about those photos with the beer bong, perhaps, or foul language showing up in a comment thread. Now they might plausibly anticipate a friend request from Grandma.

In response to this, Facebook has created ways for users to quarantine certain friends -- limiting access to their information for some friends, and offering the creation of family groups. Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies social technologies, says the new family pages are a way for Facebook to navigate the waters when family become friends.

"The problem that Facebook faces is simple -- users are often reluctant to connect across generations," he wrote in a recent blog post. "A child may not want to grant a parent access to their everyday goings on, but it is quite likely that the child will want to see pictures from family events, read notes about family members or find out about events from relatives."

A small group on Facebook has been formed to help young people hide "incriminating" information from their parents or friends' parents. Using privacy settings, parents can be placed on a list that blocks "all photos of inebriation and nudity," incriminating stories posted by friends, or excessive swearing, the page says.

"Now you can lump all Parents or Friends' Parents into one category, (just like they categorized and judged all your friends in high school)," the page says.

Not all young people are trying to hide things from their parents. Danika Heatherly, a 21-year-old senior-to-be at Whitworth University, is friends on Facebook with both her mother and her grandmother -- as are some of her roommates. Heather, who is from Visalia, Calif., said that both her mom and grandmother would prefer using the "traditional telephone" to keep in touch, but they appreciate Facebook as a tool.

"I don't think my mom or grandma use Facebook too much, other than keeping in touch with me and my sister," she said.