They are not really so much fans of the world's most popular social networking site but almost half of American parents admitted that the main reason they signed up for an account with Facebook is to spy on their children's online activities.

Besides monitoring the status updates of their children to check if they take drugs or who their kids are dating, the mums and dads also want to know what their kids say about them, according to the Education Database Online report made by Mashable and released on Tuesday.

However, some kids turn the table on their parents by configuring their settings so that some of their naughtier posts are not seen by their parents. A male New Zealand teenager, for instance, had posts about his boxing matches in school but cleverly excluded his parents from those posts.

Other kids, however, are a step ahead of their old folks and instead release their rants and raves in other rising social networking sites such as Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. Thus, recent studies said that some young people consider Facebook as old.

The study said that 72 per cent of mothers in the U.S. have a Facebook account in 2012, up from 62 per cent in 2011 and 50 per cent in 2010. About 40 per cent of the parents admitted to checking their kids' Facebook profile daily and 30 per cent monitor it 4 to 5 times weekly.

About 39 per cent said they are interested in the post of other people on their children's wall and 29 per cent want to see the photos where their kids are tagged.

On the other end, 33 per cent of teens said they are embarrassed by the comments their parents made on Facebook. While 65 per cent of young Facebook users friended their parents on the site, 30 per cent are tempted to unfriend their mums and dads, but are probably aware of the consequences of such drastic action as discovered by a University of Colorado study discussed in this video.

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