Sadie My siblings and I all use Facebook in different ways. Stevie posts a lot of pictures; Maisie likes to talk about stuff. Me and Joe post a lot of news stories, and I like posting videos or songs. I don’t like to put up personal pictures, or get too emotional on Facebook. My mum’s posts can be really personal.
At the beginning, I didn’t really want to be friends with her on Facebook. I didn’t really want her seeing pictures of me that my friends had posted. They weren’t anything bad; they just felt like a bit of my life that was separate from her. Now I don’t mind as much – I’m more open. She’s also friends with a lot of my friends on there. That’s not a problem, except that she’s quite free with what she writes. Something would happen between us, and she’d put it in a poem, and post it to Facebook, and I wondered whether my friends would see her in a different way. I think maybe I felt protective of her. But no one has ever said anything.
She has a lot of photos of us when we were little. When I was a bit younger, I hated seeing some of them online. I remember there was one where I was holding my pet hamster and I just thought I looked greasy and rough. And once my room was really messy and my mum said, “I’ll take pictures and put it on Facebook.” I would have hated it if she’d actually done it. Now I’m a bit older, I’ve learned to let go of it all a bit more. I think I’m OK with what’s out there about me.
Juliet Redelsperger-Talbot, 43, a marketing and events manager, and Nell, 13, live in Eye, Suffolk, with Nell’s father and her brother Lawrence, 10
Nell I’ve been cyberbullied before. One of my followers on Instagram, someone I knew, turned on me, then a couple of others who I’d thought were friendly were making comments on my posts. It wasn’t nice, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. In school they give you lessons about what to do if it happens to you, but when it comes to it, the reality is very different. But the school did deal with it.
After that, I became a lot more careful about who I accept as friends, and what people can see. Now I have one account for my photography and a separate one for my closest friends.
I have looked briefly at Mum’s Facebook account, but I don’t have a clue about how Facebook works. I don’t think I mind that there are photos of me. If you know the people that can see those photos, then that’s OK. If it’s not private, I’m not so sure about that. But I don’t find it embarrassing. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel like the same person I was when I was little. It doesn’t feel as if those pictures are of me.
Juliet The cyberbullying was a harrowing time for Nell, but what was good was that some of her friends were supportive and took screenshots of the comments as proof of what was happening. Nell was worried I would be angry, so she didn’t come to me until after it was over. It was awful, but in a way, I think it helped her understand what you’re exposed to online.
Nell is a great photographer, and she sends me pictures, but I check that she is happy before I post anything on Facebook. Your children have every right to veto what you put online, although they have to be a certain age before they understand what it means. Neither of mine have ever had an issue with something I’ve posted, but then they’re the generation that are used to having photos of themselves everywhere. I think it meant something different for my generation. It took so long to get photos developed that seeing yourself was so much more important.
The children were very little when I first signed up. I don’t remember thinking much about privacy then. It wasn’t until I read in the paper how posts about your children might be seen by complete strangers that I changed my settings.
As time went by, I began to feel uncomfortable about posting. It felt like everything online was becoming more about “Look how wonderful I am” and it made me feel quite down. So I left for a while. Eventually, I rejoined because it was hard to keep up with everything. So now I’ve started again but in a very different way.
