In case you didn't know it, you can put your Facebook friends into groups. In this way, you can easily sort your friends list to find someone quicker, sort your news feed to read only the posts you want, and more easily select who can and can't see certain items on your profile. From your "All Friends" page, you can create your own groups to personalize your friends list. I love this option!
These are the groups I currently use:
Family - for those I am blessed to be related to (or have been in the past)
Church - for those who attend my church with me and are not related to me
High School - for those I went to high school with and am excited to be reconnecting with on Facebook
Marfan World - for those who mutually share this condition in their families
Friends - for those people I know who don't fit into any of the above categories
Random - for businesses or professionals that I am friends with, such as my cousin's photography business, KLOVE radio, my friend's greeting card business, and Safety Graphic Fun.
Game Friends - for those people I play games with, but don't know at all, and have restricted from seeing just about everything on my profile including my friends list and wall posts (so they won't see this at all)
So which group am I excluding from this test? None of the above! I created a new group that some of my family and friends will be in as well as their original group. Yes! Your friends can be in more than one group if you want them to be. How cool is that?
The new group is called Children and will "house" all of my family and friends who are in 10th grade and younger. Some of them may not appreciate being called children, but I can only give the group one name and it's for a specific purpose. If the Facebook Privacy Tool really works, they won't be reading this anyway (unless they subscribe to my blog, in which case I will appease them with a soda and candy bar of their choice).
Why am I telling you all of this? Because on occasion, I would like to post news articles to Facebook that I believe are very important to my adult and older teen friends. They are related to government policies or activist group events that could affect the quality of life for the very children on my friends list. I want their parents or people who care about them to know, but they don't need to be reading this stuff themselves.
Based on the nature of what I may post (nothing Jesus couldn't look at, I promise!), I will also be including on my Children's list any 11th or 12th grader that I'm not sure of how their parents would feel if they read some of the articles. After I send some articles, you can notify me if you think it would be ok for them to read what I send. You may also notify me to let me know if your 11th or 12th grader ISN'T on my list and you'd prefer they are so they DON'T get those particular posts.
If you see an article posted by me with a comment that says "Restricted", you'll know it's one that I have blocked from your children. In fact, that's why I wrote it on this post. Please check your children's Facebook accounts to be sure that they DID NOT receive this post. I want to be sure the Facebook Privacy Tool works before I send out anything they don't need to see.
My prayer is that, as adults, we will be wise in what is going on around us in our world and that we can protect the innocence of our children for as long as possible regardless of what the world thinks they should be exposed to.
Again, if you have children who are on my friends list, please let me know if they did or did not receive this post. If you don't know if your children are on my friends list, what an awesome opportunity to sit down and talk with them! If they press for "why are you checking", they only need to know if my test to block the boring grown-up stuff worked. :0)
God bless!
