by Daniel Onyango

Created on: April 03, 2010   Last Updated: April 04, 2010

If anyone asked me whether I should be friends with my children, I’d never think twice which answer to give. The above poser, however, is not an ordinary one, because what is left unsaid is the idea of how far parents should pry into their children’s private lives(or vice versa). Yes, I expect many parents to rise up with indignation at the mere suggestion that they should ever be left out of their children’s lives at all! Indeed if we could, we would follow our children everywhere they venture into, but that is not the real world.

Well, consider the following scenario: your teenage children are discussing in your living room, a disagreement between one of them and a friend, and there you are, uninvited, offering your genuinely heartfelt suggestions, or they have gone out for a dance with their peers and out of the blue you are among them ‘getting down on it’ in the spirit of togetherness. If the social service is not notified of your ‘cool’ behaviour, don’t be surprised if they flee whenever you appear. Friendship or not, there is a limit to how much ‘fraternisation’ or 'socialisation’ parents can have with their children, particularly those of teen-age. For this is precisely what Face book is all about, specifically among the 16 and above age group .

Apart from the usual statistical information that it publishes about date of birth, interests and so on, Face book is considered a social scene, a forum where people of various interest groups fraternise. More particularly are peer groups of the same age, school, city, university or neighbourhood who roam the Face book social scene at will. My own experience with this discourse community is that they are usually in a world of their own, extroverted and a wee bit unguarded.

Not that parents should be not interested in finding out what their children are upto, what with on-line crime on the increase,  but their breathing too close behind their children's necks is not the way to fight crime. Moreover your offspring's freedom of association and choice may help them to make responsible choices in life. Although honest parents would confess that they could hardly recognise the personae that front their own children on Face book, sometimes 'drama' may be useful in shaping your child's personality.

Young people adopt pseudonyms, aliases and nicknames not because they have lost their own identity, but because they are 'searching’ for who they

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