Facebook, Parents and Perhaps the Generation Gap?

The World Wide Web

If you were on Facebook today you probably noticed that many of your female friends' status updates were colours. If you were on Facebook today you will have also noticed that those whose status updates were not colours.....had no idea what the colour stood for. If you're not on Facebook at all.......keep reading because there is still a valid point to all this.

When I woke up I had one friend who's status said "black". Within 2 minutes a second friend's status also said "black". Now both these friends are in Alberta so at first I thought it was something local so I hopped online, checked out some Alberta news websites.....and found nothing. From there I jumped onto Google and searched "Facebook status colour" and surprise, surprise I found all kinds of conversation threads of people asking the same question "why are people putting colours as their status update on Facebook". Turns out there was a message going around to women to put the colour of the bra they were wearing as their status and forward the message on to all their female friends. It was aimed at generating some awareness for breast cancer (not that I feel breast cancer needs many more awareness campaigns. If you are not aware of it by now, you live in a really deep hole that is covered by a gigantic rock). It was also suppose to be a fun way of confusing all our male friends (you know because all their female friends status updates were colours and they didn't know why).

So naturally I hopped on board and put my Facebook status update as "Pink" (really it was more Hot pink but that isn't really important). One male friend guessed it was my favourite colour (we all know that isn't true) and mom was wondering if it was something new that I bought. Auntie Gayle got frustrated and put her Facebook status as "What are all these colour comments about?? you guys are driving me mad!!!!!!" It bothered mom so much that she actually called my house and left me a message asking me what my status meant.

Now this brings me back to my title. Something was going on today and I didn't know what, so my first thought was to head to Google to find the answer (which I did). Mom's first thought was to......call me. So is this the generation gap......that I turn to the Internet first for answers and mom turns to.......well a person? And do parents on Facebook understand that while we use Facebook to share pictures and stories and well sometimes just to stalk old friends, there is suppose to be a separation between our Facebook life and our real life (example, if my status update says "I'm sad" but I haven't called you to talk about it....it's probably because I don't want to talk about it I just need an outlet to express my current mood. Any conversation I want to have about it....I'll have on Facebook). My other friends seem to understand that. Now I'm not saying parents shouldn't be on Facebook. I can give Mom the benefit of the doubt because perhaps I was her only friend with a colour status this morning. Really I am just commenting on the difference between my reaction and my Mom's reaction to something that was on there today.

So in short, Google is a great source of information (Bing works really well too) and What Happens on Facebook, stays on Facebook.

Julie