My ds reshared a post made by a young woman on his Insta story from a Valentine’s dinner.
I get ZERO information about his dating life. Well, now I have a NAME, and I have been creeping all morning!
Does this make me a horrible, bad, weirdo (feel free to insert any other adjectives your want) parent?!
To my knowledge, he has not had a serious GF. Someone told me along the way that it, “means something,” if you post a pic with a person (as in a couple pic - just the two of you) on your MAIN Insta feed. I asked ds if this were true - probably a year or two ago. If I ever saw a pic of him with a girl on his main Insta feed (or whatever it’s called) would that be an indicator?? He said, “Yeah, pretty much.” Now this was NOT that - just on his story. But I got all excited anyway.
I am not meaning to limit this query to the exploring of our children’s dating lives and friends. This can have a broader context. Do you do a lot of creeping? On social media or other internet available data?
I do some. I follow all of my d23’s social media accounts - she’s not a big poster. But if she does and she tags someone, I will usually check them out! Or I will check out the people who like and comment on her posts. Sometimes I just like seeing the kids that she’s been in school with since kindergarten…sometimes I like to check out the new friends. She has one good friend who is very “out there” on social media - I don’t follow that girl but I do check out her posts every once in a while. My daughter is not a big sharer and I feel like her friends posts help me understand what’s happening in their lives more. My own mom, in her 70’s, is a big social media creeper and I have found that hard to deal with in my own life! So I really try to butt out and just use whatever I see as an fyi to me.
Here’s my take. Anything someone posts becomes “public” to their followers - unless the poster blocks them. So I’m saying, your son could also block you - even as a friend - from seeing a specific post (thought that takes time and energy prob most people don’t want to micromanage).
So “public” info is up for scrutiny or creeping to a degree. Not unusual for you - or anyone who follows him - to creep. IMO what sort of matters is what you do with that info - do you share it with ALL your friends? Confront your son about it? Reshare? (horrors!!) All of THIS, is not ok!
“Creeping” is the wrong word. The word should be ‘reading’; as is reading news people make public over the internet. “Creeping” makes this perfectly benign reading sound like stalking.
I’ve done this for people I used to work with or went to school with. I’ve found out some have died, some have become very successful, etc. Sometimes a person just pops into my head and I’ll say “I wonder whatever happened to so and so”.
I will 100% admit to doing a bit of a deeper dive if my D posts something on social media. She knows we are “friends” and I can see what she posts. She rarely ever posts anything so if it’s a person I don’t know, I’ll look them up…but usually their accounts are all private so I don’t get very far!
My Instagram and FB accounts are set so that only my “followers” or “friends” can see my posts. I have them set that way to prevent a certain, specific person in my life from knowing what I am doing or commenting (long story and there is a very good reason for this). Otherwise I only post things I feel the general public can see and don’t share certain things.
I feel that if someone posts something and you can see it, it’s OK to look. I follow both of my kids on Insta and S on FB (D is not on FB). I comment and “like” as I see fit.
I’m not ashamed at how I can use the information on the internet to find out just about anything. Like the house that just sold in my neighborhood: new owner’s name, price they paid, where they lived before, how much they made on their last sale, where they work, where they went to school, how many kids do they have and what are their names - I can answer it all. My family thinks I am terrible but if people put things out there, it is there for everyone to see plus there are public records…
My social media? Not even my real name. If you know me, you know me but it won’t be because I posted something!
I’ve looked up his roommates a bit and anyone he tells me is a more legitimate romantic interest.
In my son’s case, a bad roommate situation ended up with me bailing my kid out of jail and him in inpatient psych so I like to try to at least get a vibe of what I may be dealing with.
I’m a bit of a nosy nellie when it comes to my kids - especially now that D20 is away at school. They are both very quiet on social media, so I often get a better sense of what they’re up to from their friends’ accounts.
This was my record…
When D1 had a first BF in college she wouldn’t tell me her BF name, except what sports he liked, what city he was from and which class.
In less than 5 minutes, I was able to get his name, his father’s work place, his hime address,etc.
She said, “this is not funny Mommy.”
I said, “next time just give me the whole low down.”
I figured for him to get into a top tier school he had to be at least a varsity player. I googled to find varsity players from that town then looked at their profiles to see where they went to college.
I think sometimes schools disclose too much PII (personal identifiable information) about their students in their school and local papers.
I’m a creeper, but not that much on my kids as they tell me a lot. They do call me a stalker (of other people), but I say I’m just getting additional information.
I am definitely a “reader” (as we’re calling it) and I think intent should play a factor in how we’re being judged. Mostly we want the best for our kids, or want the most information when we’re interacting with new people (so as not to say something “wrong” or unknowingly offensive…), or want to see what we might have in common with someone, etc. the internet makes it easy to do these things. Are our kids “creeping” when they look up the name of their college interviewer, or have we reached the point at which they are almost willfully naive if they do NOT google that person before a google interview? If we lean towards the former answer, then the same principle — use available information to make an interaction better than it might otherwise be — applies to us “reading” anything about friends, family, new acquaintances, or possible new acquaintances, as the case may be.
I’m a creeper. I found out that my boss, who made a very good salary, was arrested for shoplifting twice from the same store in a mall. Then, I dug further and found that one of my coworkers was arrested for domestic violence. He couldn’t have been a jollier fellow.
And I just chanced across a post on Reddit on some random thread and figured out that a commenter was the son of a long time cc member who didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about his parents. That made me sad. I wasn’t stalking at all, I just stumbled upon it. Made me stop sharing private details so much on confidential forums.
I don’t creep on my kids much. They tell me what’s going on in their lives mostly. My oldest asks for advice a lot. The youngest is a bit more private, but she still shares.
