1.4K views Sep 2009
A mock morning-show segment shows an overbearing mother using Facebook and Twitter to monitor her college-age son, inspect photos, and warn his girlfriend.
0:09 It's back to school season, and for a lot of you out there, that means kids going back to college. 0:13 Right. 0:13 The networking website Facebook 0:15 Mm-hmm. 0:15 is a great tool to help you keep in constant contact with your grown kids. 0:19 And here to show us how it all works is Today Now's own e-mom, Gloria Bianco. 0:23 Nice to 0:23 Gloria, 0:23 see you. 0:23 Good to see you again. 0:24 Hi, Tim. 0:24 Hey, Tracy. 0:25 Now, we've all heard the term Facebook, but we may not know that you can use it to keep tabs on your children's personal lives, even when they're far away from home. 0:31 You can. You're going to love this. It's so easy. All you do is create a profile and search for your son or daughter's name and add them to your list of friends. 0:39 Oh. 0:40 Within minutes, you can be writing on their wall. I write to my son Jeffrey about 5 or 6 times per day. 0:45 He must love being able to stay in touch with his mom like that. 0:47 Yeah. 0:47 It's a great way to remind him to take his psoriasis medication, or just to tell him how much I love my little Jeffrey. 0:52 That is really great. 0:53 Now, the thing I love about Facebook is all the photos. 0:55 Yeah. 0:55 That's my favorite part too. I look through all of my son Jeffrey's photos every single day. 0:59 Do you really? 1:00 Now look, now see here, I can see that he's with this young woman with the low cut shirt showing a lot of skin. 1:04 Looks like they're having a lot of fun. 1:05 Girls like that like to have fun. Now, see here with the Facebook feature called tagging, I can find out she is Jenny Longman just by scrolling over her. 1:14 Oh, that is neat. 1:15 Now, Facebook won't let me see her entire profile, 1:17 No. 1:18 but I can get a good enough idea of what she's like just by looking at this trampy picture. 1:22 I'd say so. 1:22 Sure. 1:23 The other great thing about tagging is that you can see pictures of your kids posted by any of their other friends. 1:28 Really? 1:29 Now, see here, here's a picture 1:30 Oh, sure. 1:30 of my son at an event entitled Jenny's Blazing Rager Dusk Till Dawn, and here's that young woman, Jenny Longman, again. 1:38 Look at that. 1:39 Now, here's my favorite site of all, Twitter. 1:41 Twitter. 1:41 It allows you to virtually follow your son or daughter's every move. 1:45 You can hear their every thought. It's like a dream come true. 1:48 Here's my page. 1:49 Oh wow. 1:49 You just pick a name that's very common, and after it you add the year your son or daughter was born, 1:54 Uh-huh. 1:54 and they'll think it's somebody that they graduated with. 1:56 Very 1:57 Well, you can send the messages all day long. They won't even complain about it. 2:00 Just make sure that you spell everything wrong and swear a lot. 2:03 Right. 2:04 And sometimes your child will even respond to you. 2:06 That's great. 2:07 It is great because if you're thinking of driving up to your son or daughter's college some night just to watch them through the window, you'll know if they're around or not. 2:14 Right, could save you a lot of time. 2:15 Or if your son says he's going to go off snowboarding for the weekend with someone named Jenny, 2:18 Mm-hmm. 2:19 you can send her a message warning her to keep her slut hands off your son unless she wants to find herself in some pretty big trouble. 2:25 Great. So now the only excuse for not knowing every detail of your child's life is having a life of your own. 2:31 Gloria, thank you so much for being with us again. 2:33 Okay. 2:34 And now get your glasses ready, because we're going to interview a war widow in 3D. 2:37 Get those glasses out. 
