On balancing social networking tools and family

This isn't as library-related or engineering-related as I try to be, but it does address what I imagine is a fairly common problem. I'm curious about your thoughts.

I've been using social networking tools--and, here, I'm going to address mostly Facebook and Twitter--as catch-alls, adding friends, colleagues, and, increasingly, family, willy-nilly. I have a couple of privacy settings on my Facebook, keeping a few people from seeing my updates, though if they navigate to my page, they can still see it. (I'm fascinated that I could lock even my profile page away from the eyes of people I've friended. I find that really interesting.) I think I may have "all pictures of me" locked down, as well, though I always waffle on that one--the only embarrassment I expect ever to get, on that count, is that I'm wildly unphotogenic at times. I'm hardly a wild partier.

But my point is, up until now, it's worked. I have, at times, wished I had a locked-down Twitter account, where I could say some of the things I really don't want the whole world to see me say, to a select group of friends. But I don't, because, for the most part, I'm inclined to treat social network sites as inherently unstable and very hackable--if it goes up there, one way or the other, it'll be public, anyway. (E-mail and IM should also be treated that way--for reasons inherent to the technology--and to an extent, I kind of do.)

But I'm finding that social networking with my family isn't really working out the way I'd expected/hoped. I already self-censored, a little bit, because there are some professional colleagues I really respect on any given social networking site, and I don't want to offend or to seem "too weird," whatever that is. (Sometimes I still forget that it isn't just me and my college buddies, because I am not perfect, but I generally do an OK job of this, I think.)

However, I'm finding myself self-censoring--and, to my horror, censoring others by deleting their comments on my posts--more often, now that family members are there. Do I mind my high school-age cousin or Dale's college-age brother knowing I'm human and goofy? No, not really; I want them to know me well enough to trust me, to come to me with questions if they need to. But I'm finding I'm not really comfortable with the level of openness Facebook is forcing between, for instance, my mother and me. I've grown comfortable--as I think most of us do--with some distance, some lack of knowledge, about what is going on in our lives and our minds. Facebook wants to bridge that gap, but for a multitude of reasons, I'm just not sure that's a gap that should be bridged, in our or most other parent-child situations.

Also, I notice that some family members use these tools very differently than I do. They don't follow the same conventions. They don't even have the same definition of what constitutes "social networking." It could be a fascinating learning opportunity for me, if I could find the balance, and the distance, necessary to really observe them.

I guess when it was just two groups--friends and colleagues--I could balance the stack of dishes, or house of cards, or whatever metaphor best fits. But it seems to be crumbling, now that a third group has really come into the picture. I'm not sure whether the problem is "too many groups" or "one group is family," but I have definitely become aware that I've lost the balance I had maintained for so long.

Has anyone else had this experience? What did you do? I hate to scale back my involvement in these tools, or to lock out family (where I even can). But maybe therein lies the only answer--what do you think?