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Trendspotting: What’s Mom doing on Facebook?
By Debbie Kwiatoski
Posted on [2009-04-17 15:04:08]
Mom, apparently, is doing lots of things of Facebook – as well as U-Tube, MySpace, Twitter or any variety of social networking sites that have come into their own in the past couple of years. Once the rebellious, bastion of teens and twenty-somethings, who found in the relatively anonymity of these cyber-cafes the freedom to say and be whatever and whomever they wanted (often to the dismay of parents, who could think of all sorts of reasons not to…), the sites have now become the favorites of middle-aged moms and grandparents. This new demographic sees the environment as a great way to keep up with old friends, business colleagues and relatives who are strung out around the world. In short, it’s become a great, global living room – or kitchen table – where folks can hook-up (in the old sense of the term) and hang-out.
While the trend is still pretty well-confined, with about 7 percent of people over the age of 65 having an online profile someplace, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the sites are adding new older members by the truckload every day. By far, according to the Pew project, Facebook seems to be the favorite among women older than 55, with that networking site posting a 550 percent increase over the past six months. By comparison, Facebook membership with people under 25 years old grew by less than 20 percent for the same time period….of course, the argument could be made that what the demographics are really showing is the contrast of an maturing marketplace over a growing one – in other words, in 2008-2009, most people already have a Facebook profile by the age of 25.
Another interesting note here is that, by the beginning of 2009, Facebook had 200 million users – making its user base larger than the populations of any world country, save China, India, the U.S. or Indonesia. With such a huge user base, another argument could be made that having a Facebook profile, or some sort of online profile for social networking, has reached the proverbial ‘tipping point’ in our global 21st century culture, making it now as ubiquitous as having a telephone number or screen name.
Classes are even being offered to help the older generation figure out what this social networking thing is all about – and how they could – or even should – get in on it. Most people over, say, 45 just didn’t seem to have been born with the brain wiring to pick these things up easily on their own…ask any twelve year old…
For all those tweens and young adults who aren’t especially keen on having their parents and grandparents in on their private social networking activities, there is an "out," however, you have to agree to "friend" a person before they can be part of an online group. The catch is, how do you explain to your 75 year old grandmother that you’d rather not "friend" them on Facebook?  |
