Facebook Spawns an Army of ‘Helicopter Parents’

Now that college freshmen can create Facebook profiles before they even set foot on campus, first-year students are logging on to the site to look for dirt on their soon-to-be roommates. And, much to the chagrin of campus officials, some worried parents are doing the exact same thing.

A New York Times article examines Facebook’s role in empowering these " ‘helicopter parents,’ hovering and ready to swoop down and rescue their children." Students almost never call to complain about their room assignments, say housing officials, but parents have no such compunction about doing so—especially if Facebook research seems to expose a future roommate as a lush or a libertine.

"This is the first year we’re getting these Facebook calls, asking for roommate changes," says Alan Levy, director of housing public affairs at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "Parents tend to not be connected with Facebook culture, and there can be something very off-putting about the way many young people represent themselves."

For the record, though, Michigan’s answer to urgent room-change requests is almost always a simple "no."

For more on incoming students’ use of Facebook to vet their roommates, see an article from The Chronicle by Elizabeth F. Farrell. —Brock Read