Sunday, September 6, 2009

Insights via The Onion

With two posts from the Onion within the last week I can only conclude that 1) I still believe its summer vacation 2) humor is an effective tool to discuss complex policy questions.



Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

1 comment:

A. Fox said...

First of all, I'd just like to say that I love The Onion. That said, although I realize this is a parody, I do know some parents who go a little far in their 'protection' of their children. Being a parent gives a lot of latitude, but almost stalking isn't one of them.

Parents getting more involved with technology seems to be a big theme in the media these days. Verizon Wireless has a commercial making fun of parents who take using technology too far as well. A daughter says 'mom, just because we're facebook friends doesn't mean you can write I love you all over my wall' while the son says to the dad 'quit it with the twitter updates.' It seems that for the most part older generations are so enthralled with technology that they forget their completely letting go of their privacy

For my part, I think parents are completely missing the point of facebook. The website is a social networking site meant to facilitate communications between friends and family, not a new way for parents to check up on their children. I have to wonder what kind of future this kind of blatant privacy invasion will produce. If parents become more and more obsessed with safeguarding against 'evils' in the world, how will children make them mistakes that are so necessary to growing up?