Help, My Parents Posted on My Facebook Wall

Sixteen-year-old Ashley M. of St. Louis was sick of adults barging in on what was once her exclusive virtual hangout. So when her mom's friends and her friends' parents started creating Facebook profiles, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She created a group called "Adults NEED to stay off Facebook!" The group, which now has more than 500 members, regularly vents its frustrations online. And all across Facebook, groups like "If You Have a Child You Shouldn't Have Facebook" and "Facebook Should Not Allow Adults to Join!!!" have seen growing membership rates.
 
In September 2006, Facebook--formerly an exclusive online club for college kids and high schoolers--opened itself to the entire Web population. The Facebook blog post from September 26, 2006, described the expansion: "This includes your friends who graduated pre-Facebook (yes, there was such a time), [and] your friends who don't have school or work e-mail addresses. Now you can all connect." According to a May 2007 comScore survey, 10.4 million Facebook visitors are now 35 or older. Facebook wasn't the first to venture into mature social networking (see MySpace and LinkedIn), but the graying of this service in particular has a lot of kids saying GAL. If you don't know that means "get a life," you might want to do some homework before diving in.

No Adults Allowed

"When I first joined Facebook, you had to be a college student to join. And it was great, it was special, it gave us our own little spot on the Web," said Jonathon Defaria, a student at the University of Central Florida. But with adult members now on the site, "it loses its specialness and becomes MySpace with a different name. It's no longer limited to a semi-tight knit network of your college friends across the world; now it's someone's nosy parents."
 
But that's not stopping people like Debbie Wrixon, a 38-year-old insurance underwriter from Toronto, from joining the site. Wrixon was yearning for younger days--ones filled with rotary phones, Jimi Hendrix, 33 1/3 LPs, and drive-in movies. Although it was an age that preceded the Internet, she found others on Facebook who wanted to share memories of the 1960s and 1970s. Nevermind that the service's core members, like Ashley and Jonathon, only know about this era through reruns of The Wonder Years. Wrixon's Facebook group, entitled "Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 60s," had more than 2,100 members as of press time.   
 
Uninterested in social networking sites for mothers only, such as cafemom.com, Cathy DeCenzo, 54, joined Facebook to network with her friends and people in the Web design industry. "My intent was not to embarrass my kids, but it did," said DeCenzo. "And unfortunately it became another intrusion by adults into 'their world.'" DeCenzo's 20-year-old daughter has reacted by not allowing her mother to see her profile page. Still, Cathy hopes her daughter will allow her into her network, promising that "whatever I see on on Facebook stays on Facebook."
 
Hall Ramirez, a 19-year-old sophomore at California Institute of the Arts, isn't a member of one of the anti-adults-on-Facebook clubs, but he's nevertheless concerned about the infiltration of adults. Many are popping up in his groups, and some of his friends' parents are joining the site. "I think it's embarrassing for a parent to join in, because it's really not their game to play," he said. "There's a lot of adolescent 'growing up' stuff going on Facebook that a parent is really not supposed to see."
 
 John M. Grohol, a social psychologist who publishes Psychcentral.com, told us that sites like Facebook help today's youth feel like there's a place that accepts them for who they are right now, as opposed to five years from now. If parents keep on registering in large numbers, however, their kids may feel compelled to find a new virtual hangout. "It won't be long before youth find a new technology, a new way of interacting, or a new twist on social networking that they can call their own," said Grohol. "At least for a little while."

Making New Friends, Keeping Up with the Old

Reading Donna Barsalou's wall posts (Facebook's term for forum  entries), you might think she had gone back to school with the youthful Facebook crowd to major in online lingo. "I am certainly older than the majority of users on Facebook," said the 55-year-old recreation therapist in a Facebook messaging chat. "My daughter, who is 27 years old, told me about Facebook, and being someone who is not willing to be left behind in today's technology, I jumped right in and set up my own profile."
 
Like many other Facebook newbies, Barsalou was attracted to the potential of finding people from her past with whom she had lost touch. "I am so excited to say I found and reconnected with a few of my childhood friends. We were army brats. The last time I had spoken to any of them was in 1968 when I moved away."
 
Reuniting is only part of the appeal of social networking sites. Nathan Mather, a 28-year-old attorney from New Jersey who started using Facebook nearly two years ago, has made a lot of new friends. He started the "Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s" group, which now has more than 104,000 members. "I wouldn't call all of them my good friends, but I've met plenty of 'Facebook friends' over the past year," he said.