Facebook And “Old People”

Social Media and “old people”

When social media websites first started to get popular, it was used mostly by teenagers. As it grew over the years, adults started getting interested in it to find old friends, classmates and family. Teens were mad when finding friend requests from their grandmother in their inbox. Personally I didn’t start accepting older family members until just this year. I was reluctant to do it in the past because I wanted to be able to post something without the worry of offending my “old school” family members who are much more conservative than my generation. The majority of my peers felt the same way and because of that, they migrated from Facebook towards Twitter just to get away from them. Another thing that came into play was, because of the fact that my family members are “old school”, “did I have to worry about them judging me from what I posted”? Which was another reason why I didn’t want to accept older family member as friends. After maturing a bit, I started to realize that social media websites are a good tool for people of all ages to use. Most people are too busy with life and don’t have time to keep in touch with their loved ones so being able to just log into Facebook at night or on a smartphone when you have a little down time is beneficial. I can admit that I still don’t accept family on twitter but Facebook is cool. The live chat capability along with being able to post pictures and a status gives our family a look into our live so that they can see what we are doing even if we don’t speak often. I recently got in touch with my favorite cousin as a child whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in almost 15 years but as soon as I saw her name in the request box I was excited and we got to catch up with each other. In conclusion, although I am still iffy about accepting family members in fear of offending them or them judging me, I believe it is a great tool to be used by all people of all ages

353 comments September 11, 2012