by Deborah Nies

Created on: May 18, 2009

Some adults like video games just as much as children. It's another example of adults taking over experiences that were originally intended for children. The examples that come to mind are Facebook, Harry Potter, and Webkinz, to name just a few.

"Parents don't belong on Facebook."

Or so said my friend's 18-year-old son, when she asked for his help in setting up her Facebook.com account. It wasn't too many years ago when this same boy used to share everything with his Mom. They would take long drives to nowhere, and discuss girls, his day, his friends, his dreams. No topic was taboo. But now, as a young man, he was putting down his cyber-foot.

Facebook is the equivalent of a young person's electronic journal. It is a place for a kid to be free to talk to his or her homeys (It was hard to type that without smirking, yes), without fear of parental censorship or ramifications. As a parent, you would respect their privacy if it were their diary or journal, right? (Right?!?)

I have to say that I like Facebook. I like keeping touch with a lot of friends all at one time. I like knowing what is going on in their lives. Sometimes life is just too busy to email everyone. With Facebook, you can update all of your friends at the same time. When my daughter gets old enough, do I want to be able to access her Facebook space? I'm not sure about that yet. She's 9, so she won't be getting an account for at least another 20 years. (Uh-huh)

However, I do think that there are lots of places that adults don't belong. As adults we have a lengthy history of messing up things that started out as kid's entertainment. Let's start with Beanie Babies. Kids fell in love with these cute little stuffed animals, and to the extreme horror of their parents, they CUT OFF THE TY TAGS! (OMG, what WERE they thinking? Did they think they were TOYS for God's sake?) At $5.00 each, they were a perfect and easy kid's birthday gift. Then, adults discovered monetary value in Beanie Babies, and it all went downhill. We bought the animals, but we didn't let the kids play with them, much less bend/cut/mutilate that "precious" TY tag. We were saving and collecting them to pay for our children's college education. Our children lost interest in Beanie Babies, and the resale market plummeted. A Beanie Baby is again worth approximately $5.00.

Enter the new high-tech Webkinz stuffed animals. This time, you DO open the tag to get your secret Kinz code to enter into the Webkinz site. The plush animal itself

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