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.

Post-College Panic

Here I am, a person with a college degree. It came in the mail about a month ago, it is still in the envelope, and I still can't comprehend that it is much more than a stiffer-than-usual piece of paper with some embellishments. Sure, I feel a sense of pride when I realize that I have accomplished something more than most; only 39 percent of the U.S. population have a college degree. But for some reason I feel like it isn't enough. Maybe it has something to do with this: Here I am, a person with a college degree, living back at home and biting my fingernails day and night whilst surfing job listings on the web and trying to figure out just who it is that I am going to become. I am not entirely sure what to do with my degree, or that I even want to do something with it specifically. What if, now that I'm finished with college, I want to be a writer, or an astronaut, or a soldier?

Being a college graduate is an amazing thing, but it adds an extra element of pressure to the already mixed-up mix. Yes, some go into college knowing exactly what it is they will be when they get out, but I'm 100 percent sure I'm not the only one who graduates and still has no earthly idea. It doesn't help a great deal that I have a political science degree and no intention of going to law school or becoming a politician. I really can't imagine dealing with such a stressful environment day after day. On the flip side, I feel that as a college graduate, I should be a go getter. I should be out there in the field making things happen, changing the world, making a name for myself. But I'm still scared. I feel like a frightened child on the first day of school with ridiculous amounts of anxiety about trying something new. It is uncomfortable entering the working world, moving away from home to be a grown-up. All I really want is to make enough money to be able to shop at Whole Foods and to be able to come home in the evening to my cozy apartment, my cats, and a bottle of Riesling, and not worry about the next day until it comes. Why is it that I feel so inclined to break into something major, when all I really want to do is relax and live my life?

I think 4-5 years of an academic environment puts one at odds with oneself. What I mean by this is that when you are constantly stressing out about work that will be judged, work that will either lead to extreme praise or criticism, you get used to a pattern of stress, future-looking, and competition. It makes you feel that you must always be striving for bigger and better, competing with the next person, and making something of yourself. It does not allow you to believe that figuring things out as you go is an option. This, for some, is great preparation for the world of a professional, while for others it is merely a contradiction of their nature.

When it comes right to it, college is nothing like real life. Curriculum does not always prepare everyone for what is to come. For some, like me, it is merely a stepping stone, a resume builder, but not so much a determinant of who they are or what they will be doing in twenty years. For some, it is more an experience that will be remembered fondly, and that provided some necessary life skills more than job or academic skills. I honestly believe that if more panicked college graduates understood this, they would find the future less daunting, and would be more inclined to find their own way without letting their degree define them.

Worked Up So Textual

At the risk of sounding like a 75 year old cat lady who "walked to school every day in three feet of snow," let me just say: manners have totally gone to hell these days.

Again, at the risk of sounding like the Unabomber, it's all because of the blasted technology.

I swear to Christ, while walking to class today, I stopped to talk to a friend, and he pulled out his cell phone and began text messaging in the middle of our conversation. He was able to tune me completely out in a matter of 1 second. There was no "excuse me while I take this," no apology for being rude, nothing!

This isn't really an uncommon occurrence... actually it happens quite often among people my age. And when it does, instead of the text fiend apologizing to the unsuspecting conversationalist, the poor talker feels like she is interrupting some secretive exchange that she isn't invited to join.

At any given point in the middle of any given class, at least 90 percent of my classmates are either on lap tops, text messaging, or just totally incapacitated. If I am so miffed about being ignored in favor of words on a cell phone screen, I can only imagine how a professor feels when trying to engage a class full of technology-dependent drones.

Now, I'm not saying that I disapprove of technology completely, I mean, obviously I'm not blogging with a quill and scroll, but something has to give. Are the people of my generation and those after doomed to spend eternity with their fingers attached to a keyboard and their eyes fixed on a screen? Will all forms of in-person conversation eventually become obsolete? And if so, are all the traditional manners that I have known until now doomed to follow?