LET’S FACE IT: Zuckerberg Wins Time Person Of The Year

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine’s person of the year for 2010.  While a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, he began Thefacebook.com from his dorm room.  His simple mission was to connect college kids through social networking.  Today, Facebook has 550 million members, who speak 75 languages and log 700 billion minutes a month on the network. 

Mark’s father, Ed, says that he was “strong-willed and relentless,” as a child.  He goes on to say that, ”for some kids, their questions could be answered with a simple yes or no…for Mark, if he asked for something, ‘yes’ by itself would work, but ‘no’ required much more.  If you were going to say ‘no’ to him, you had better be prepared with a strong arguments backed by facts, experience, logic, reasons.”  Or, what?  How about “no” just cuz I said so?  We digress…

We tell our kids that “you can’t have too many friends.”  Because of Zuckerberg, now our kids can have a twelfth of the people on the planet to “friend.”  Hmmmm….so, how do we make sure our kids know the difference between a true blue friend and a faux friend.  There are plenty of examples not to “friend” the world, from hurtful gossip to kids being cyber bullied with their “private” information being passed around the world.  A big job MAMAs…make sure your kids know the difference between friend and faux – and if your KID-Os aren’t secure and mature enough to deal with the cyber world, where everything you post lives forever, just say “no.”  The reason?  Cuz you said so! 

We need to teach our kids to stay connected, really connected, to the people they care about.  Facebook is fun for promoting superficial relationships.  But, our KID-Os need deeper, long-lasting relationships, so encourage them to spend time face-to-face, not on Facebook.

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