A couple weeks ago, I received an e-mail I never expected would come: “Vicki Nesbitt wants to be friends with you on Facebook.”
Vicki is my mother, the same person who – after receiving a text message – pointed to the screen and asked me: “What’s this envelope thing on my cellphone?”
I accepted her friend request, taking the plunge into this new world where baby boomers are discovering social media and connecting with their children online. At 33, I’m not worried about what she’ll see on my wall. I’m pretty tame, and the photos of me turning over police cars were destroyed long before Mark Zuckerberg entered Harvard.
If anything, I’m the adult in this electronic relationship. After my mom got “poked” for the first time, I had to explain that it’s not always a good idea to poke back.
“People are writing me messages,” she said. “What should I write back?”
“Don’t put anything you wouldn’t want your employer to see,” I said.
As I watched her connect with people she hadn’t seen in years and flip through their pictures on her iPhone, it reminded me of a baby discovering how wheels work for the first time. Once a kid figures out that, with a gentle push, you can send that toy truck racing across the kitchen floor, there’s no going back to the wooden blocks.
And so instead of reading books and magazines, my mom is now slowly spending more time checking what her friends posted on Facebook. Like most of us, she’s been bitten by the digital zombie and highly likely to infect another person.
I never accepted my mom’s invite. No profile picture… is it really her?
Yeah, it was really her. My niece recently showed her how to load a profile pic. She’s becoming more tech savvy, albeit at a snail’s pace.
This is kind of unrelated, but I once accepted a friend request from someone I didn’t know. It was a ploy to hijack my email list. For about 3 months emails selling Viagra, porn, penis enlargement pills, etc. were sent to everyone under my name.
Geez, that’s awful. I used to accept some random friend requests from people I didn’t recognize, but often it just turned out to be people trying to sell or promote something.
The last comment was from me
Yeah I know what you mean, brother – ha I’m in the same boat , I saw the request at three in the mourning! Too add or not to add yes my friend, that is the question, but atleast not everything is seen on there. 🙂
Glad you enjoyed the post. You need to start your own blog!