Social media : The general rights and wrongs of communicating on these platforms — be authentic, don’t troll — are well hashed out in 2024, but grey areas remain: the work group chat minefields, the perils for parents, the fraught choice to follow the boss. In the first of a series of social media etiquette guides, Catherine Sylvester asks experts what to do if a child or teenager — maybe your kid’s friend or a young relative — wants to follow or interact with you on social media, and what your obligations are if you follow them. For many growing up, the mere thought of addressing a friend’s parent by their first name was inconceivable.
It was always “Mr or Mrs so-and-so” unless they were close family friends. That they had a life of their own was unimaginable. Being interested in what that life might involve — even more so.
Today, navigating adult-child relationships in a social media world is not as straightforward. There are the legal and moral no-gos that are a given, but what of the more nuanced interactions or potential pitfalls the modern parent may encounter? It’s been 18 years since the granddaddy of social media went public as Facebook opened its membership to anyone over 13. Twitter (now X) launched the same year followed by Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok in 2010, 2011, and 2016 respectively.
Meta , which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, reported 3.19 billion daily users across its platforms for December 2023. That’s a lot of follows, views, likes and friend requests to successfully master.
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