Facebook is more than a means to let your friends know what you did last night. The social networking site with millions of subscribers worldwide has increasingly become a tool for tracing -- and occasionally reconnecting -- severed biological ties.
Sixteen-year-old Alexander Dorf had the shock of his life when a random message appeared on his Facebook "wall" from a Florida woman named Terri Barber: "Hi, I was just wondering if your parents’ names are Jamie & Jeff?”
The name jumped out at Alexander immediately. It was the woman he'd been trawling the Internet for with no luck; his birth mother. His adoptive parents weren't quite as surprised as he was at by contact.
It was only a matter of time. And the Internet is changing nearly every facet of adoption. It brings new meaning to the term DIY. There are couples openly searching for birth mothers, mothers looking to reunite with long lost children they gave up for adoption. The Web has circumvented a process that used to involve lots of red tape.
“It used to be a slow process,” admits New Jersey adoption facilitator and psychologist, Anya Luchow. “And when the children were minors, it was one that their adoptive parents could control.”
Now kids aren't waiting for adulthood to search for the missing pieces -- or members -- of their past. They are online and savvy enough to track down their birth parents. Or they make themselves highly visible on sites like Facebook and Myspace, so it is easy for their birth parents to find them.
While children under 13 are not allowed to open Facebook accounts, many children do so anyway, opening a Pandora's Box where they can be "friended" by virtual strangers. There are stories of children being approached by birth parents online, sometimes before the children have even been told they're adopted.
In some cases, the reunions stay friendly and largely virtual. In others, such as the case of Aimee L. Sword, who was convicted of having sex with her 14-year-old biological son, after finding him on Facebook, the risks are very real.
“It’s uncharted territory,” says Dr. Luchow. As with everything on the Internet, there are no hard and fast rules, no etiquette. It is up to parents to lay them down for adoptees to stick by.
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