<p>In case you still think Facebook is only for the kiddies:</p>
<p>"Many of these older folks use social networks to keep tabs on younger family members and they often find fruitful connections with their peers after they’ve friended all of their kids and grandkids, according to an informal survey by Stanford University professor BJ Fogg. Join a conversation on this topic at CNN’s Facebook page</p>
<p>The trend is still relatively confined. Only about 7 percent of people older than 65 have online social-networking profiles, according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.</p>
<p>But Facebook’s popularity is growing most quickly among women older than 55, according to a site called Inside Facebook, which tracks Facebook’s growth.</p>
<p>I am on Facebook, and yes, I do need a face lift. </p>
<p>I don’t know about other people, but the 3 new requests per day, being tagged … I find it tiresome. I don’t want to know what one of my friends had lunch, just took a shower. going to work …</p>
<p>I heard Twitter is even worse. The people I know are just that interesting, correction, I just am not interested in so much minutiae of anyone’s lives. </p>
<p>OTOH, I don’t know Obama or the Jolie-Pitts I may want to know what they had for lunch.</p>
<p>OK, I am well under 55, but ds just signed me up yesterday. Already one person I don’t like and one relative I couldn’t pick out of a lineup have requested me as a friend. What a bother. I “ignored” the non-friend and haven’t decided what to do about the relative. How long can I claim newbie as an excuse?</p>
<p>toneranger, I enjoyed your link to the “10 reasons . . .” I don’t want to join now because I can’t imagine being any more connected than I am already. There aren’t enough hours in the day as it is. Maybe when I am truly ancient and perhaps confined to bed, I’ll love sitting for hours on the computer every day, checking up on everyone in cyberspace and having them checking up on me.</p>
<p>You can ignore it and change your settings so others cannot see your picture and/or know you even have an account. Additionally you can keep most things from being announced in e-mail and/or even on FB page, Take control!</p>
<p>I was in a room with five or six 50+ women recently. We were talking about who has taken the Facebook plunge and who hasn’t, and why. One woman said she had started making a page but stopped because she didn’t want to reveal her age. The rest of us, stunned, said in unison, “But you don’t have to list the year!” It was a “duh” moment for her, but she still isn’t on Facebook. I am, but I don’t have time to pay attention to it.</p>
<p>I’ve certainly seen the trend in action in my own family. First it was only my daughter on FB…then I joined (reluctantly, for work purposes)…now suddenly it’s my aunts and my stepmom, who are all 60+. </p>
<p>I’ll never love it; it just feels too shallow and superficial somehow. It encourages passing comments and “pokes,” not conversations. But it’s another way to keep in touch, and I do find it a lot less annoying now that I know I can screen out all the dumb little applications like “Which ancient Norse god are you?”</p>
<p>Well, I do want SOME people to find me so I don’t want to go too far off the FB grid.</p>
<p>lunitari, I have to admit I’m embarrassed that friends are spending time trying to figure out which “Grey’s Anatomy” star they are. I mean, I waste time on mindless nonsense, too, but I have the good sense to hide it! :D</p>
<p>I’m on facebook(50)…AND my 71 yr old mom is on it too!! lol…it started with my kids friending me, then other people I’ve know thru the years friended me, then my kids friends started, lol…then lots of relatives I have in the UK, saw I was on, and voila! I’m a regular. Its silly but fun. I don’t really go to my kids “walls”, they’ll post on mine, and I’ll answer. But it has been nice to find freinds that thru moves, etc over the years have been lost…and now we are in touch again.</p>
<p>How do you screen out those annoying little applications? I don’t want to throw stuff at my friends, I don’t want to buy them Cokes or flowers or pieces of flair, and I certainly don’t want to download applications so they can do those things to me.</p>
<p>And is there a way to screen out everytime someone on your friend list plays Scrabulous or whatever? Who cares!!</p>
<p>I recently joined facebook, guess I’m one of the youngsters – under 55! (for a little while longer . . .) It is phenomenal how many of my peers have joined in the last few months. I am in touch now with my nieces and nephews and a couple of people that I haven’t heard from in years, but am still fond of – it has been fun reconnecting. I like seeing the occasional snippet about a niece in a distant state in a play or some such thing that I wouldn’t know about otherwise.</p>
<p>If you move your cursor over to the right of the person’s name who has just taken the “What shoe are you quiz” or whatever you will have a choice to hide that person OR hide the quiz. That means it will disappear from your news feed.</p>
<p>Hey, I’m well under 55 but have been on Facebook for a while. I really enjoyed being able to connect up with friends from the past who I would never have been in touch with otherwise. It’s also nice to keep in touch with friends who live in other states or other parts of the world. It just makes the communication that much easier - it’s nice to just send a one line hello/happy birthday rather than a phone call or email. Great for us lazy ones. :)</p>
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