I have a query about tweaking Facebook, can you help?

Once you accept a friend request, you can hover over the box the says “Friends” and a dropdown menu with options will appear.
If you do not want to see anything that he posts, make sure that “Show in News Feed” is NOT checked.
If you want to see some of what he posts, chack “Show in News Feed” and select “settings” – there you’ll be able to chose “Most” or “Only Important” things to appear in your News Feed; there is also the option to select/deselect which types of content you want to see there.

Note that this limits what you see in your news feed. If you go to his page, you will see anything that the person has given you permission to see.

@hearkat So it’s that simple, great, thank you so much for the information, I shall attempt to do just what you have said later today. My nephew has just turned 15 and the stuff on his Facebook page is not stuff I want to be receiving every day : ^)

@hearkat well I attempted to do what you said but when I offer over the box, there is nothing even remotely like “show in newsfeed”??? You were talking about doing that from his page weren’t you??

It may depend on the browser you’re using – it doesn’t appear when I access Facebook on Firefox or Safari, but it does in Chrome. Very peculiar.

Did anyone else read this as “twerking on Facebook”?

It looks like they changed the way notifications are controlled – I used to be able to follow @hearkat‘s steps, but now I can’t. In addition to the dropdown Friends button, there is a Follow/Unfollow – but I’m not sure that necessarily affects the newsfeed.

If he continually reposts links from specific sources, you have the option of hovering over the dropdown arrow beside the item in your newsfeed (top right), and selecting “hide all from [original poster X]”.

Finally, you might want to create lists for different “classes” of friends – just select Acquaintances in the Friends dropdown for your nephew, and then change the newsfeed settings for Acquaintances. I haven’t done this myself, so can’t offer advice – but I think this would do what you want it to.

I have absolutely no idea how to do anything on Facebook other than write comments and send messages, it is not my thing at all. Thanks @glacial for your information, maybe I will be able to achieve what I want to.

Having just added him as a “friend”, if I now “unfriend” him does he received notification of that or can I just do it quietly without him being aware?

@Adagio He won’t get a notification, but if he’s at all aware of his friends list, or pays attention to his newsfeed, he will probably notice that you have unfriended him. A lot of people say that the perfect response to getting an unwanted invitation is to friend then immediately unfriend, but in my experience, it seems to result in more hurt feelings than necessary.

If you’re going to do it, I would suggest sending him a note saying that you only have the account for the four specific people you can’t otherwise keep up with, that you hardly use Facebook, and you really want to keep the list strictly to them. This at once tells him why you’re unfriending him (so he doesn’t have to make up a worse story in his mind) and keeps you honest (because, hey – it’s actually true!).

@glacial I’ve unclicked the follow button, maybe that will mean I don’t get anything from him, I guess I will know by tomorrow morning if it worked, fingers crossed : ^)

@Adagio Let me know! I’ve been wondering exactly what that does. ;)

Just start twerking Facebook, and he’ll more than likely block you, and you won’t have to worry about him.

Seriously, though, your network is going to increase if you start to allow more and more people into it. Your nephew is just the start, if you make that start. So you should resign yourself to allowing him in… and then someone else after that, someone important to one of your existing contacts… and then someone new, etc. After all, that’s what Facebook is for. Yes, you can set your privacy settings to exclude everyone from your notifications except the two people you’re there to keep up with, and block notifications from all others except them, too. But why be on Facebook, accepting invitations from others, and do that?

I recommend that you broaden your outlook and your network both.

@glacial I wanted to let you know that I have received no posts through my nephew’s page so I think un-following someone is the way to go, allowing you to be “friends” while not being inundated with all their stuff : ^)

@Adagio Thanks for the update – glad that worked!