You’re Never Too Old For Social Media!

Now what is that you’re doing there with that computer?

Spoken in a thick Long Island accent, these were the first words that indicated my 78 year-old grandmother’s curiosity in what I was doing on my laptop. I was visiting her for the weekend with my boyfriend and was precariously balancing my laptop on the edge of a table near her bedroom window so that I could have a hope of “borrowing” the one, free floating Internet connection that someone else wasn’t smart enough to secure. But why go to all of this trouble, you might ask?

To check my Facebook account of course.

My grandmother, who we all call “Me-Mom,” was leaning over my shoulder when I finally managed to catch an Internet connection. As I pulled up my Facebook account, and with it- pictures of my little brother, uncles, aunts and cousins, she immediately became fascinated:

Oh! Now, what is this? Everyone’s got their pictures on the Internet? What is this “Facebook” thing?

My boyfriend, who is not too fond of my relationship with Facebook, stuck his head into the room to see what we were up to. Upon hearing me start to explain how Facebook worked in terms that a 78-year old, non-computer savvy person could understand, he exclaimed:

Oh god- now you’re going to get your grandmother on there?! Here we go…

Making the Sale

I ignored my boyfriend and gingerly showed my grandmother some of the features of Facebook, explaining what a “social networking site” was and how it could be beneficial to various people. For instance, I use my Facebook account strictly for personal reasons. My ‘friends list’ is small and consists only of friends and family. I explained what status updates were and what ‘writing on someone’s wall’ meant. I also showed her how she could post pictures, play games and connect with other people through current connections. For instance, I pulled up my aunt’s profile and scanned through her friends list in order to demonstrate how I had found out that my uncle had a FB account.

Sold!

My grandmother, who is the nucleus of our family, loves to keep in touch with her family and has been doing this mostly via email (because she has a hard time hearing on the phone). However, when she discovered that most of her kids and extended family were on this social networking site called Facebook, I didn’t have to try very hard to sell her on the idea of joining.

Within minutes, I helped her set up her Facebook account. I uploaded a few pictures to help her get started with her first photo album, and then we started adding a few family members. We then did a search to see if there was anyone she knew who had a FB account, and sure enough, Me-Mom found some friends of hers! She was thrilled and immediately hooked.

And with Christmas just around the corner, she knew what she wanted from her six adult children: a laptop along with a fast Internet connection so that she could check her Facebook account! It just goes to show you that you’re never too old for social media