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Until seven weeks ago, Shelley van der Spank heard just two words when she asked her two teens about their lives: “Oh, nothing.”

As in, “What did you learn at school today?” “Oh, nothing.” “What are you doing on the computer all day?” “Oh, nothing.” “What is this Facebook thing I'm always hearing about?” “Oh, nothing.”

Ms. van der Spank eventually figured out that last one for herself. In late April, she signed up for Facebook, added her kids to her friends list and gained access to a new realm of teen expression she wasn't entirely comfortable with.

“I thought some pictures of girls in their bathing suits were a little inappropriate for others to view and told them,” Ms. van der Spank says.

But just when she started to think Facebook was an infallible new weapon in the battle to keep tabs on her children, the unexpected happened: The teens began spying on her.

“They snoop on my screen, count my friends, view my pictures … and offer silly comments,” says Ms. van der Spank, who is now resorting to privacy measures normally reserved for teens blocking nosy parents.

Over the past eight months, Facebook has transformed from an online Animal House, exclusive to a few million high-school and college kids, to the world's seventh-most popular website – a 30-million-strong social networking portal open to all ages and branches of the family tree.

The site now bridges a chasm once rarely crossed between student life and family life by offering a window into the lives of both children and parents. Family dynamics may never be the same.

The students-only world of Facebook began in 2004 as a site for people at Harvard to create a personal profile and search for classmates. By late 2005, any student attending a major American college or high school could sign on and start posting tales of drunken escapades with the photos to prove them in relative privacy.

But late last year, Facebook opened up to everyone. Since then, Facebook's total user base has doubled.

“It used to be a wide open space,” says Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina graduate student who's writing his dissertation about Facebook.

“Since it opened up, people have been turning on their privacy options. They aren't comfortable any more.”

That includes recent converts like Ms. van der Spank. “What I censor is some pictures that I don't want [my kids] to see, but will e-mail my friends for a good laugh – nothing naughty, just not for their eyes,” she says.

Jenna Bromberg used to trawl Facebook with all the inhibition of a sorority girl at a spring-break kegger. She exchanged bawdy messages with friends. She broadcasted that she “drinks well with others.” She posted boozy party pictures, one showing off her finest beer-bong form.

That was until the fourth-year Cornell University student received a troubling message.

An all-too-familiar face requested to be Ms. Bromberg's Facebook friend: her mom.

“I almost deactivated my entire account right there,” Ms. Bromberg says.

She was torn, but in the end she couldn't deny her mother.

“It's really changed our relationship,” she says. “My mother is now looking at pics of me bonging a beer.”

Parents have congregated on Facebook to such a degree that in some cases they are now the ones trying to keep their children off the site.

Sarah Gallagher, a Vancouver mom, regularly logs on to her profile to chat with friends and seek out former classmates. Yet, her 14-year-old daughter is forbidden from joining.

Ms. Gallagher has her reasons. She thinks that her daughter's generation is losing the ability to socialize in person.

“They don't know how to phone each other and make a date,” she says.

But there's another reason. Ms. Gallagher isn't comfortable with her daughter poking around her mother's personal profile.

“She's still at the point where she's listening to me,” she says of her daughter.

“But I don't think I'll have that authority much longer. She's already starting to use the double-standard argument.”

Still, Facebook isn't all family dysfunction and tumult. In some cases, the site is actually strengthening family ties. For Ms. van der Spank, Facebook is a source of conversation topics that stirs her teens to insights beyond “Oh, nothing.”

“I can ask, ‘So I saw on Facebook that Amy is not with Joe any more.' The kids open right up and we talk about it, share ideas, laugh. I felt shut out and closed off before Facebook.”

Even Ms. Bromberg, the Cornell student, confesses an upside to her mother being on Facebook.

“We're closer now, for sure,” she says.

“She treats me more like a friend than she did before. She sees all my inside jokes. She sees how I treat my friends. If it lets her feel a little better about my lifestyle here, then I'll let her have it.”