"Staying In Touch With Your Parents 2009"

I'm 21 and I no longer live with my parents...
My mom and I are really close, but I often don't have time to call her and talk to her - at the moment, e-mail and phone are the only two ways we can connect. I'd like her to see more of what goes on in my life, since it's sometimes hard for me to remember everything I want to tell her, and I'd like her to be more contactable. My dad, too. They're both constantly on the computer for work - they work together from their home.

I'd like them both to get facebooks and/or AIM accounts. They're both pretty paranoid about getting viruses and crashing their computers, since they have important information stored on there. My mom's very hesitant about getting either of those accounts.

How do I convince her/them? Any ideas?

This is a great question, and a great idea.

I would suggest Facebook, only because it would be the easiest to convince them that they can't get a virus from it since it is only a website (AIM requires you to download a file, etc).

I got my mom on Facebook and it worked out great! Once she figured out how to navigate, she knew more about what my friends were up to than I did! Just make sure you don't have anything on there you wouldn't want them seeing.

To make it even easier, I would set up new Gmail accounts FOR them (something easy to remember), that way they aren't using personal emails to create the Facebook accounts. Explain that it's just a website, like yahoo or google, that lets you message, chat, look at pictures, etc.

And make sure you specify that they can not only make their profiles private, but that they can make them unsearchable! Hope this helped.

***TheGivingTree

PS- An alternative to both would be getting them on Twitter, to exchange status updates, and even update VIA text message.