FACEBOOK
In
"The Social Network" we meet a group of seedy college sophomores
glued to their computers. The time is night. The space is indoors. The lighting
is brown and the set is littered with take-out boxes and frat-boy junk. The
year is 2004 and Facebook is aborning.
Flip
forward to now. Old lady in Vermont living room balances laptop on knees and
clicks onto Facebook. Jinks through messages from 75 Friends, almost all of
them much younger, and adds a couple of comments. Half-hour passes. Gets up and
goes outdoors to clear snow off terrace. What is she thinking? She is too old
for this.
Its
youthful image aside, in early 2009 the fastest growing Facebook demographic
was women over 55, this at a 175% rate over several months. Women subscribers outnumber
men in all age groups.
You'd
think among older women the techno-factor might be an obstacle to Facebooking
but it doesn't seem to hamper women aged 55-65.
In women over 75 (that's me) it certainly is. We are the 1950s females:
pre-pill and pre-equal opportunity. We married early and seldom worked outside
the home for more than five years. One salary was enough to support our 3.5
children.
Unlike
most of my peers, I got my first computer in 1984 when I was 50 and have
evolved as an adept since then. I used it mainly as a word processor, although
when the Internet came along, I hopped onto e-mail via a dial-up connection. I
spent as much time waiting for the ball to stop going
around as I do now clicking in and out of news and shopping sites.
I
know people who won’t do Facebook because of privacy concerns. But listen to
this: privacy doesn't exist. You might not go near a computer but your face is
photographed and filed at every intersection, from the overpass and at the ATM.
If you use a credit card you are tracked: every purchase, every delinquency.
Your habits are charted and shared.
Recently,
I got G-mail about my granddaughter's homework. Keyword: homework. Ads popped
up for various on-line homework helps. Yesterday, in an e-mail, I mentioned a
CT scan and right away several ads for cancer sites appeared in my G-mail
window, including one for mesothelioma. Something is reading my mail, going in
there and picking out words! Anyone think e-mail is private? Forget it. Nothing
is. Nothing is free, either. My husband points out
that G-mail appears to be free, but isn't. "What did you expect?" he
asks.
What
the heck: I saw friends doing it, so I opened a Facebook "account"
revealing scant personal information but enough to cue the potential "Friend":
university, year, hometown, e-mail address. I posted pictures although not too
many. I say what I like and I say what is on my mind, understanding that a
cranky old lady ought to be discreet – but not too…
I've
connected with people I missed and thought about for years. I can see their
Faces and know what they're doing.
I don't feel like a snoop or a voyeur. I love it when I can be in touch with
relatives I never knew I had and with people who remember me the way I was.
The
best is to be in touch with their grandchildren and to follow the You-Tubes and
the websites they suggest. They open whole new worlds and keep the little
windows on life from closing. Ever hear of "The Hot Club of Cowtown" – a great
country/swing trio out of Austin? Check my
Wall.
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