Facebook users aging fast. "A parlor for the middle-aged?"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MNTS18KFB8.DTL&type=printable

by Shakescode • 17 years ago

14 23 17 years ago

The difference between 25 and 45 is much much less than the difference between "hit up my wall" and "whats 'the facebook'?"

Age as a signifier in itself is slipping.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

My own use of facebook is probably a-typical, but I have used it to reconnect with a bunch of people that I'd lost touch with over the years, now that that has happened I'm no longer an active user, we communicate using different media now.

No need for me to visit facebook to keep in touch, email, the phone and so on work just fine.

zimbabwe5• 17 years ago

Many people find Facebook easier to use than email - if you're on a Windows box, Facebook messaging is sexier and sleeker than either Gmail or Outlook. Facebook's also done a brilliant thing with its Phone Book. If I access it from a mobile device, it lists the phone numbers of all my friends.

StrawberryFrog• 17 years ago

The 30-40+ crowd have been on livejournal for a good few years now, it's not surprising that they're on facebook too.

edw519• 17 years ago

I hope I'm not the only one who doesn't care how old anyone else is. So what if your parents (or your kids, or your teachers, or your employer, or anyone else is on Facebook).

The guidelines of Facebook oughta be the same as the guidelines of hn which oughta be the same as the guidelines of kindergarden. Don't post anything you'd be embarassed if anyone else saw and don't say anything online you wouldn't say in person.

marcusbooster• 17 years ago

Those crazy kids are a fickle bunch, and throughout history they've wanted to not be where their parents hang out.

But it looks like Facebook is trying to grow past it's original niche into the online identity provider for all. Which means someone else will have to fill the void to give kids a chance to discuss sex, drugs, and whatever other startling discoveries they seem to make on a daily basis.

zimbabwe5• 17 years ago

A quick search reveals many people in my network who post photos of drug use despite having their parents as friends. Methinks some privacy control has been taken advantage of.

Those crazy kids are a fickle bunch, and throughout history they've wanted to not be where their parents hang out.

But with Facebook the two groups are separate. Think of it as a house: It's all one place, but each group has their privacy. The parents can have a dinner party upstairs while the kids get drunk and party in the basement.

Agent1014• 17 years ago

The trouble is it is not only you that has to follow those guidelines. Friends can put up pictures of you and tag you. Not all content about you is placed there by you.

gaius• 17 years ago

And you can set who can search for tagged pictures of you...

graywh• 17 years ago

And you can also un-tag those pictures of yourself.

m0shen• 17 years ago

After seeing the cesspool MySpace turned into, I'm okay with this.

jeremymims• 17 years ago

Calculating the aggregate age of all facebook users is irrelevant since the only people who matter to you on the site are your "friends". So my 15 year old cousin's friends are mostly her real world peers and her 45 year old dad's friends are mostly her peers. While there is a tiny overlap, it wouldn't be considered significant.

It isn't like a bunch of old people are now trying to hang out with the young cool kids causing the entire system to be less cool.

zimbabwe5• 17 years ago

That compartmentalization is what makes Facebook such a neat social site.

stcredzero• 17 years ago

The middle-aged crowd is the one with the money. Middle-aged housewives are the ones with the money to spend, and the time to discover new things to spend on. This is why so much of the retail world is aimed at them. As a result, much of our culture is distorted by the lens of their viewpoint. I think a lot of youthful rebellion of recent decades has been changed by this.

One middle aged woman I spoke to on the plane noted that there is a need to be able to "compartmentalize" one's online social networking, much as one does this for work. Her country club employees (where she works) have Facebook profiles which she uses to try and make contacts for new sales, and she finds that some of her fellow early 20's employees have Spring Break pictures only a few clicks away from hers. Not the best thing for her. I suggested LinkedIn, but this doesn't quite work for what she has in mind.

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

Anyone know of a decent firefox extension for sending print articles back to the regular web page? I keep my browser maxed on a 1920x1200 monitor, so these are unreadable (though they're great on my Pre). I'd rather have ads and pictures than a giant wall of text, especially since I have adblock, but is there anyone else who shares that need?

xuhu2• 17 years ago

Maybe remove the "&type=printable" at the end of the URL ?

xuhu2• 17 years ago

The 34-54 age-group is a 20-years interval (28%) versus 24-34, which is a 10-years interval (25%). In other words, there are almost twice as many users in the 24-34 interval as either in the 34-44 or the 44-54 intervals (contrary to what the article states). Am I missing something ?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

I'm one of those middle-aged users of Facebook. What I find appalling about Facebook is how much its context changes users' online behavior. Many of the people on my friends list of Facebook are people I also know from specialized, topical email lists. On the email lists, the people are serious and thoughtful, but on Facebook some of the same people let loose with a bajillion "What grocery produce section vegetable are you?" quizzes and endless flair and bling and mafia wars. My friends are less my friends, and more of an annoyance, on the Facebook platform. Facebook turns adults into kids.

So although I appreciate Facebook for linking me up to a few former classmates from childhood (my first Facebook friend was one such), if I want to do what I really enjoy, as a grown-up adult, I look for those same friends in other contexts. And that, I think, is why Facebook is extremely unlikely to build a business model through which it can gain more revenue per user than it has expenses per user to serve up cute photographs and videos.

Facebook users aging fast. "A parlor for the middle-aged?"

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