Accepting Facebook
There is a post about Facebook on the church’s semi-official IT blog. It sort of says facebook is like terrorism, you will never eliminate it, so you better learn to manage it. Those are my words, not his.
Here is some of the post encouraging parents and leaders to get involved online:
if you are a parent of a teenage or a youth leader, you are probably less technically savvy than the youth you work with. Many parents and youth leaders I have spoken with don’t really understand what Facebook is and most have never visited the Web site. I’m not advocating spying on your kids (I’ll leave that up to your own discretion) but I do think parents and leaders should visit Facebook and see what the youth are doing online.
For the record, I absolutely advocate spying on your kids, and telling them that you are doing it. They secretly like the attention, it is like you are paparazzi.. and they are the celebrities.
The posting is authored by Jimmy Smith, a new contributer over at LDSMediaTalk. He is a the Web Analytics Product Manager at the Church.
Visit Facebook? Why not just join? My son and I friended each other on Facebook & he was cool with it. Of course there’s little overlap in our lists of friends, so we each use it our own way, but it’s nice to be able to see how he presents himself to the world. I think Facebook is better than MySpace, and I have no use for YomYow & neither does any other LDS youth I know of.
YomYow is an interesting move for the church to do, and I personally think it is a good one. Personally, my parents have been skeptical of social websites such as myspace or facebook, because they are unfiltered chatrooms that could contain conversations that are not appropriate for LDS teens, let alone anyone. Parents would feel reeasured that their children are safe and secure if they knew that their conversations were being monitored by Church adults and leaders that uphold the same standards as the church. Let’s just say it’s a blessing that we have these monitors because it can prevent and get rid of any potental pretators. To Jeans, I am 15, and I’m interested.