Grandma & Grandpa Get on Facebook

Last Christmas (2008), I helped my parents set up their own Facebook pages. Both of them will turn 70 within the next few months. Though both of them can use a Mac and have done e-mail for the past decade, neither one of them are particularly technical. Mom's a just-retired hospital R.N. and dad's a just-retired, still-subbing, public school administrator.

Their motivation for getting on Facebook? My sister and her husband's move from L.A. to Austin -- and all the Facebook photos they regularly post of their daughter Ari on Facebook. (She is adorable...)

Turns out, photos of a two-year-old granddaughter are lure enough to get most grandparents on Facebook and get them to learn how to navigate it.

Within a week, my parents were "friended" by all of their old high school friends on Facebook. There were a ton of them already there.

It turns out they were ahead of the curve. Or part of the curve. According to the Pew Internet & American Life project (http://www.pewinternet.org/), the fastest-growing demographic on the Internet is the 70-75-year-old group.

And they're joining Facebook. And even Twitter. Apparently, retirement communities around the country are setting up their own social networking groups, private social networks, and Internet and social networking classes. Bob Moos at the Dallas Morning News wrote a great story about the trend Oct. 12.

So if you need to write a white paper on who you can find using social networks, check out the Pew Internet & American Life Project web. (Who has money to donate? People old enough to have made some. And they're increasingly in....social networks.)

So things are changing at the Daisy Dell senior living communities around the country. Thank God they'll have high speed Internet access by the time I need to move to one! At this point, I'd much rather give up cable TV than the Internet.

Apparently, I am not alone. More on that in the next post. My mom wants to live chat on Facebook.