I let my oldest daughter create a Facebook account the other day.

I’ve been against my daughters having Facebook accounts because there is always a level of privacy you’re giving up with it and I wanted to keep them sheltered as long as possible.

I gave in because the other students whom she went to Japan with have accounts and they’ve posted their pictures on Facebook. And let’s face it, if she wants pictures from them she will have to get them from Facebook. What adolescent is going to take the time to separately email my daughter pictures they’ve already posted?

I’ve been using Facebook for a few months now. In the beginning there were a lot of growing pains for me trying to learn how to use it. Now I pretty much just stick with it for business purposes. I “share” my daily blog, because let’s face it, the majority of my friends and family would not read my daily blog if I didn’t post it on Facebook. What busy adult is going to take the time to go to my website separately from Facebook?

I tried sharing my Facebook account with my daughter, but it doesn’t work well. One because her friends do not know me by my writing name and two because I will be forever tagged as “Liking” My Little Pony.

It’s not that I hate My Little Pony, but as an adult and for a professional persona, it just doesn’t seem a good fit. So I let her create her own account. Her first comment was, “This isn’t hard. Why did you think it was hard?”  and within an hour, she had 20 confirmed friends.

I’ve always taken a stubborn stance on social media for my daughters. I had a sixth grade teacher tell me that I had to get my kids cell phones and let them text.  It was the only way they would communicate with me, she said. I found that hard to believe.

My youngest daughter got the first cell phone because her bus dropped her off in the middle of nowhere and I wanted her to have options in case, for some reason, we weren’t able to pick her up. She got her father’s hand-me-down phone when he “upgraded” to a senior-friendly phone.

I thought that old phone would slow down my daughter’s texting. It had a traditional keypad in which one numbered button was assigned three or four letters. So if the letter had an “s” in it, she’d have to push the number 7 button four times. Let me tell you, it did not slow her down. She could even text without looking at the keypad.

I did, however, slow her with the cell phone plan I have which has only limited texts. So she has to share (always a good strategy). Plus, I have rules to texting: not at the table; not when visiting people, especially grandparents; not when we are on vacation, at least not when we are having family time and they are not allowed to text people they don’t know in person.

Last Christmas I upgraded my younger daughter’s cell phone and gave a cell phone to my older daughter. I figured my older daughter would be driving soon and it would be helpful to her (me?). All of a sudden, the sixth grade teacher’s words made sense. I started getting texts from my older daughter that made me realize I should’ve gotten her a phone years earlier: “I need to bring soda to my Japanese club meeting;” “I have to stay after school to make up a test;” “The concert is next week;” “The bus will be late because of a lock-down” (it’s happened). All very helpful messages that save me a lot of time and best of all don’t have me showing up and having to sit around and wait or telling me at 6 a.m. she needs something for school that day.

So back to Facebook. There are rules for Facebook, as well: no “friending” anyone you don’t know in person (this is a running theme in all my social media rules), do not give out personal information, do not post or write anything you wouldn’t want to come back at you when you’re twenty-five, thirty, forty years old.

Maybe liking My Little Pony wasn’t so bad after all.