Confession: I Spy On My Daughter’s Facebook

Teenagers: pay attention. Your mom totally knows what you are up to on Facebook. One mom fesses up.

Via: lamebook.com

Do parents spy on their teenagers on Facebook? Of course: in 2013, a lot of parents have been active on Facebook for years.

BuzzFeed spoke with a San Francisco area mother — on condition of full anonymity — who confesses to reading through her daughter's posts, and even private messages, when her daughter forgets to log out in between sessions.

The following is an edited transcript of BuzzFeed's interview.

I read all my kid's Facebook stuff. Don't tell my daughter; she would be pissed and be careful to log out, and I wouldn't be able to see it anymore.

I don't log in as her. I actually don't know her password.

The rules are that I have to be friends with her and I have to be able to see what she posts. No overly suggestive photos. Don't say mean things about another person, including a teacher. Don't use curse words. No dirty photos. Keep it clean. We know employers look at it. I want her to respect the power of Facebook and what it can do.

She has about 600 friends on Facebook. In some ways it makes her safer. There is a critical mass of people that know her in the city. There is no room for her to make a mistake without 600 people knowing about it.

I see "LOL" "What is ur number?" "What are you doing? "I need to get my jacket back." "Sarah has it." They can't carry on a conversation. It is worse than text conversations. It's mostly pretty tame — and lame.

I did read my daughter's friend saying "I was talking with so and so," and then my daughter wrote back, "Was it a sexual thing?" And I was cringing. My daughter just wrote "sexual" somewhere in the world. She has had a boyfriend for almost a year though.

I do read messages from her friends, but mostly I just see [evidence] that they have had a Facetime. I have caught her using it in the middle of the night — waking up at 1 a.m. for a secret Facetime. But I used to do that too, with a phone call.

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[When I was a teenager] my mom read in my diary that I was doing drugs. I was like, "What the hell! You read other people's diaries?" I was just not hearing that [doing drugs] was that big of a deal in comparison to being a snoop.

If I found something that troubled me it would tough. It depends on how troubling it is. I would try to draw it out of her in another way. But if it were really bad, I would tell her straight up to her face, "Hey, you left it open. You don't get to have that level of privacy until you are 18."


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