The Pitfalls of Social Media, I

My wife and I have been conscious about Gabriel's use of computers and further to that have avoided posting images of him on Facebook, etc.  We rarely do it and on those rare occasions that it happens his face is hidden from view.  We are in no rush to set up any accounts for him, though we did muse about setting up an email account for him to receive various digital artifacts from us until the time comes for him to open it up and learn a little about himself. We do not wish to get him habituated to Facebook any sooner than necessary. I'd love it if that day came and he simply said that Facebook was so passé or something to that effect.

Still, he likely has more screen time than we would like and there are times when we do use it to pacify him. (Guilty as charged, but Your Honour we only do it when we really, really need him to chill.) He values that screen time but there have been a few times when we've grounded him with a few days without TV and he manages not to miss it and we even got into the fifth day without him asking for it.

There are times though when he is more eager than we would like to watch Mighty Machines or Bob the Builder on the phone when boredom sets in. A few weeks ago, he flailed away at my wife's phone while she was scanning her Facebook time line. He happened to see something along the lines of a children's video and wanted to see it. My wife settled him down, but little did she know of the consequences. Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

A day or so later when my wife was putting down Gabriel for the night, my mother-in-law called my wife's phone to check in. I answered. She wanted to see how things were for us and update on things that were going on with the rest of the family. Having covered off all of those items, she tried to investigate into an article that Nadine had apparently liked on Facebook. She was not entirely certain that Nadine would have liked an article on a parenting page where a wife was complaining about her husband losing interest in ahem... you can guess. I tried to check my wife's timeline for interest in such an article while trying to ease my mother-in-law's curiosity or concern as tactfully as I could. As I opened the computer to check my wife's Facebook activity, I was able to report that, as far as I could tell, she had not posted anything for about two weeks.  I could not, however, track down what my wife was liking. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was asking if I knew any of the other people who had liked the article. The unspoken question about my husbandly ... ahem ... hung like a cloud that showed no signs of dissipating with a calm shrug and the conclusion that someone hacked in. The call ended without curiosity or retention of reputation... Hold it, what? reputation?... assured or resolved or otherwise safely consigned to "don't ask and don't tell" (wrong phrase?) or perhaps put back in that place where all parties involved are blissfully ignorant of the topic and no longer able to recall that it was ever raised or why. It was as awkward as the voice mail sequence from the bro movie classic, Swingers.

The phone call ended without much resolution and when my wife emerged from putting the lad down for the night, I mentioned the more uncomfortable aspect of the phone call and she promptly checked on her timeline.  There was indeed a like on said article from a parenting website or Facebook page. It was the result of the lad's flailing reach to start the video he wanted.

It was then - carefully - unliked.