ArcaMax

By all means, ask people in your circle not to post photos of your family on social networking sites.

Your friends won't think you're a freak; they'll just think you're being unrealistic.

The people in your personal circle of actual "friends" may go to great lengths to respect your wishes, but then there are your kids' friends; their teammates; their teammates' moms and their teammate's mom's sister-in-law, Brenda, who took some awesome pictures of the kids during their last game and has posted and "tagged" all the children in the photos.

Join these social networking sites yourself. This is the best way to patrol what photos are floating around.

Then you can attempt to control them by removing "tags" or asking people to pull photos down. You have the right, as well as the parental responsibility) to do this.

(July 2011)

Dear Amy: I read the letter from "Helpful Grandma," the grandparent whose grandchildren posted questionable photos on Facebook.

I remembered my grandmother's advice: If I made a funny face or stuck my tongue out, she told me that if I kept it up, my face would freeze that way – forever. This was decades before the internet existed. Now that we have Facebook, it turns out she was right! How prophetic.

– Prophetic Wisdom

Dear Prophetic: Facebook has been around long enough now that I think we're starting to see a cohort of early adopters who are confronting evidence of their young foolishness. And how much do we hate to say, "We told you so"? (Not very much.)

November 2011

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(You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.)

©2021 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.