Haha, that's hilarious. Although, I tend to IM my brother to ask him if he's seen my blog today... My mom uses the internet for everything us young whipper snappers use it for (but then again she's a programmer, so....). She wants me to help her open an online store so she can quit working for The Man, so we'll see. Oh yes, and she also uses it to spy on her kids by checking our blogs, IM (to see if we're online) and this forum (she's a member here, haha).
funny how this thread was intended towards "parents", which assuming that we all are young but thats not the point....lol...anyways, my parents dont use the internet...well, my dad knows barely anything about computers and he only uses it to search for items on ebay and tells me to order it when he finds interesting stuff...(and by stuff, i mean like chinese videos etc..)
My mom uses it to look up recipes or cool places to go, and my dad is a salesman so he uses it for well all the things related to buying and selling mainly email though since most of the time his customers come to him.
My parents use it for email, buying stuff (seeds, books, etc), selling stuff (ebay), online banking, getting info and my dad runs this graphics site .
My parents are both in their 80's and despite my best attempts to explain the internet to them, it just seems to be beyond them. I think my dad would love it if he could just overcome his fear.
Mom also uses the internet: everytime she is going to travel, she call me so I have to check the wheather chanel. Then I fax the forecast to her (it's true!)