I sat with a friend a few weeks ago as she scrolled through photos of her college freshman daughter on her phone. She asked me “Doesn’t she look happy? She looks OK right?” Her daughter had recently had a difficult time which was now over but her mother – like all mothers would – still worried sometimes that something might be wrong.

    For generations of parents sending children off to college meant knowing little to nothing about how their children were doing. Other than the occasional letter or call from a dorm room phone children who had left home were mostly unseen and heard from infrequently. College kids could get into all kinds of trouble and their parents would know nothing about it until Christmas vacation or summer break.

    Now of course that’s not at all how it is. Parents of college students can spend hour upon hour examining photos on Instagram or Facebook of their children. They look for hints of sadness in their eyes the way their clothes fit whether they’re really smiling or just sort of smiling.

    However I don’t think it’s necessary. College is a time of intense personal growth. Pain is a necessary lesson for the emotional leap from childhood to adulthood. Mothers shouldn’t be able to see photos in real time that capture their children when they’re at their worst – whether because of too much alcohol or too little happiness.

    The blessing of social media is the ability to connect at any time with your child no matter where he or she may be in the world. Facebook Instagram and the rest are keeping our helicopters flying long after they should have landed. Maybe it would be better for all of us to be a little less aware of the state of our children’s lives once they leave home. Better for the children and certainly better for the parents.

28. That friend scrolled through photos on her phone most probably because__________.

     A.she was bored and wanted to kill the time

     B. she wanted to make sure her daughter was alright

     C.she wanted to help her daughter through the difficulty

     D. she was sure something was wrong with her daughter

29. What does Paragraph 2 tell us about parents of college students in the past?

     A. They were often worried about their children.              

  B. They usually let their children do whatever they liked.          

     C.They were usually too busy to care about their children.                                   D. They lacked means of knowing about their children’s situation.

30. What does the writer think of children’s experiencing pain at college?

     A. It is helpless.                                         B. It is nonsense.   

       C. It is necessary.                                         D.It should be prevented.

31. The passage is written to show that ______________.

     A.children don’t really have freedom at college

     B. social media make our life much easier than before

     C.today’s parents contact their children more frequently

   D.parents shouldn’t follow their children at college through social media.