Facebook: An Older Crowd, A New Dynamic

If you've recently noticed that your social networking sites are appearing more like your parents' yearbook than Facebook, you are not alone. The fastest growing demographic joining the networking site Facebook is 30 plus. Many of those joining are doing so after noticing the site's appeal to their children. Those in my age range may remember that Facebook used to be available for use only to those with a recognized university e-mail address. Since the site's expansion to allow everyone to join, the number of parents, and former teachers popping up in "suggested friends" has increased dramatically.

This melding of generations has positive and negative points for all involved. For the older crowd, it is a new and exciting place to interact with friends, family, and co-workers as well as an effective tool for reconnecting with old friends and love interests. It is also a hip way to familiarize themselves with the online community and become involved in something that once seemed to exclude anyone over 25. Conversely, many 30, 40, and 50 something Facebookers are spending ridiculous amounts of time chatting, updating statuses, and utilizing facebook applications like Farm Town. This may come at the expense of time spent with family, working, or on previous hobbies. This generation also appears to spend more extended periods of time on the site than younger users. This is possibly due to the fact that where social networking sites are new to the older crowd, their children have been members of Myspace and Facebook for nearly a decade.

Though their parents' cyber friendship is often annoying to children of newfound facebook fiends, it is a good way for parents to interact with their children, especially young ones, and keep tabs on suspicious activity. This has become cause for concern for many of my friends who worry that moms or kindergarten teachers are going to rifle through their party pictures and get a big surprise, but do not want to hurt their feelings by denying their friendship requests. For this reason, many college students have had to perform complete overhauls of their facebook profiles to remove potentially incriminating photos, comments, and information. Annoying, but probably a good thing anyway considering the fact that future employers are also using the site to check up on young professionals.

If you are a Facebook user from way back concerned that your cyber territory is beginning to resemble a family reunion complete with nosey uncles and wanna-be cool cousins, there are options for you. Facebook now offers many privacy settings allowing the user to customize photos and updates so that only select friends can view them. Not only does this provide an Internet safehaven from parents and future employers but it enables you to keep your business protected from creeps and weirdos.

As for you grown up Facebookers, congrats on your entry into the technology age! It is a wonderful thing to see an older group figuring out the joys of the online world, but please take a few tips from this experienced web user. Do not annoy your children online. It is charming to get a message from grandma online once in a while, but daily updates about cousin Karl or constant invites to join the Gardening Guru Group are just too much. Your kids will be much more likely to help you out with that feature you don't understand if you keep most of your activity to your own age friends.

On the contrary, don't ignore your family either! I know Facebook is fun, but it is only a website. The charm of the older generation comes in the fact that it grew up without most of this advanced technology. Children of the 50s, 60s, and 70s made their own fun and communicated in person. 80s and 90s kids have lost an element of interpersonal communication because of the Internet and texting age, and frankly it is sad. Don't let Facebook become who you are. That is advice that everyone, young and old, can benefit from. If boundaries and time limits are used when it comes to social networking sites, the web could very well evolve into a beneficial middleground to bridge the gap between generations.