"No parents' plea from young facebook users"

The new move to tell it all on blogs and publish pictures on facebook leaves us with some serious privacy issues. An article in last week's "The Sunday Independent" 16 March 2008 discusses the issue of allowing parents to sign on to facebook to keep up with their offspring and their doings. Many children do not want their parents to share in their online disclosures. A professor of communication at the University of Illinois who has extensively studied digital culture, namely, Steve Jones, is quoted as saying: "What they want to keep most private is not something they wish to keep from strangers, it's the things they want to keep from people that know them." He contends that children do not care what someone who does not know them finds out, but they do care about what someone that does know them intimately finds out. The article recommends that rules are set up for their mom and dad's behaviour online. I can believe the concern of children for I have seen some party pictures that students have had on their computers that I would also not show to my parents if I were them. But having them public raises other concerns. It is not your closest family that is your major problem, but future employers and anybody else who would want to draw a profile of you. A good blog can count in your favour but I know from personal experience how a profile drawn from someone's blog discounted him from a possible job before an interview was even conducted. In the same newspaper mentioned above another article appears that discusses someone who lost her job due to some comments made on her blog. In her case all turned out well, but most of us cannot afford these scenarios. I have often read blogs myself to arrive at an understanding of the person I am dealing with. Sometimes I was left breathless at the amount and type of personal detail disclosed. Is it ethical to use blogs and pictures in this way? I do not know, but if you are prepared to make it public, you also have to be prepared to live with the consequences.