Social Media is about the biggest thing to happen to humanity since the internet of course. Social media is a place where we socialize with our friends, co-workers, religious heads, office bosses, strangers and of course our family. We often times don’t express everything we would’ve loved to because of our family on Social media. This has become problem for a lot of people, making it difficult to share their views on some things because they have their family members on their friend lists.
Today I want to share with you how you can deal with family on Facebook. Even if you have your parents, your siblings, religion heads or your boss from office, this guide will show you how to manage your Social media accounts so you can determine what they see and don’t on your profile.
Sure, while it could’ve been easier to avoid accepting family members on Facebook, it could create a different set of problems for you. You don’t want to be the subject of a family meeting because of your social media activities.
So how do you be a normal person on social media without creating family tension? This guide will help you manage your social media accounts without offending anyone from your family.
How to deal with Family on Facebook:
1. Create different lists for family members:
Create a different list for your family members and add them to the list when you accept their friendship requests. You can name the list “Family” for simplicity sake. If you already have your family members on your friend list, simply create a family list and add them to it.
a) To create a new list:
b) Scroll down to Friends on the left side of your News Feed and click More.
c) Click Create List.
d) Enter a name for your list and the names of friends you’d like to add. Keep in mind you can add or remove friends from your lists at any time.
e) Click Create.
2. Hide Wall Posts:
Go to Settings > Privacy and customize “Who can see my stuff?” under Privacy Settings and Tools. This is where you will decide who sees what they see and who don’t. You can also do this when you are about to publish an update on Facebook.
Simply click on the “Public” button and choose “Custom”, under “Share this with” you can add the list that can see your posts, and deny those you don’t want to see your update on “Don’t share this with” section.
Then publish your update. If you added “Family” to the “Don’t share this with”, then all the people in your Family list will not see the update while all other friends on your friend list can see the update.
3. Hide from Facebook Search:
You can also be able to hide from Facebook search so people can’t find your profile when they search for you on Facebook, that way they won’t blame you for not being connected to them on Facebook.
Under “Who can look me up?“, You can determine who can look you up using your email address, phone number or you just don’t want your profile to appear on Google search or any other search engine when you are searched there.
You can simply choose between “Everyone”, “Friends” and “Friends of Friends”.
4. Avoid Unnecessary Tagging and Timeline Posting
Next is customizing the “Timeline and Tagging Settings”. Here you can determine who can add things to you timeline, and who can see things on your timeline? etc.
That way you can determine who posts on your wall and who see what on your wall. You can use this settings to prevent your annoying family members from posting anything to your wall and determine what they see when they look at your wall.
5. Managing your Profile Info
You can determine what profile information different people will see when they look at your profile. That way you can control what your family members sees when they look at your profile and what they don’t.
Simply click on the “Update Info” button on your profile, and you will notice a drop down menu beside each piece of information.
You can determine who sees what by clicking the menu and selecting your desired option. You can use the “Custom” option to either allow your family members to see such info or deny them from seeing it.
6. Determine who sees your friend list
You don’t want your family members poking through your friend list? I have just the perfect solution for it. Hide your friend list from them.
Use the privacy option on your “Friends” tab to determine who sees your friend list and who doesn’t.
Click on the “Edit Privacy” option and use the custom option to determine who can see your friends.
After you are done you can simply use the “View as” to view your profile as someone else to see how your profile will appear to your family members to be sure they are not seeing anything you don’t want them to see.
So if you have annoying siblings or nosy parents, always poking through your Facebook profile looking for one thing or the other or saying the things you don’t like, you can use handle them better now by following the tips in this guide.
What do you think of this guide? I want to hear your views towards dealing with family on Facebook and the Social media in general. How do you deal with family on Facebook? Use the comment section below to share with me.
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Very good tutorial Nwosu, because am also looking for a way on how to post some pictures which will be hidden to my brothers and one of my Girlfriend :) because the picture i snap was with another girl.. Nice tip
awesome post. think with this idea, and can be able to manage all my family friends on facebook
Hi Nwosu,
Great work, Everyone uses Facebook but lot of them are not aware how to maintain the privacy of their profile. After all you don’t want to share everything to everyone and step by step guide is just awesome. ;)
Or we could stop putting our entire lives (good, bad, and ugly) on FB. Just a thought.