K. Nicole Murtagh

Prepare to look nostalgically back on the times when the worst snooping your mom could do was rifle through your backpack or listen in on the occasional phone call. With the increasing popularity of Facebook amongst the older generations, mothers are starting to see their children in a whole new light. 

The rush of the older generation to Facebook cannot be denied. According to the site, the the 35+ age group is its “fastest growing demographic” and the data proves it. In October of 2007, the 35-54 age group had a little less than 700,000 members. By January of this year, that number grew by over 900 percent to just under 7 million. Although Facebook lifted membership restrictions back in 2006, it has taken some time for the older demographics to come in. Now, professors, parents, bosses and everyone else who at one point called it “that my-face-space-book thingy” have jumped on the bandwagon.

This surge of older users to Facebook owes a lot to mainstream media and its coverage of the site. News stories relating to the popularity of Facebook at the workplace have been covered by top media sources like CNN and the BBC. Politicians also created a lot of publicity for the site during the recent election. Both sides invested a lot of effort into reaching out to the younger generation through online social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Those who may have thought themselves “too old for Facebook” would think twice after seeing that even 73-year-old John McCain had a profile on the site.

With more and more baby boomers joining Facebook each month, the college crowd faces an unexpected addition to their friends list: their parents. So what is the reaction to a parent on Facebook? Since the site loosened membership requirements to include anyone, there have been hundreds of “No Parents” groups to protest the move. Others have just kept ignoring the friend request from Mom. 

When blocking Mom is too cold, many have delved into their privacy settings, making sure parental snooping does not reveal anything too embarrassing. Thanks to some customizable privacy settings and the ability to block certain people from seeing things using the “Except these people” feature, it is not too difficult to hide those pictures of you at that party last weekend.

The issue of privacy on Facebook is not a new one. Last year, major media sources highlighted the fact that many employers were checking the profiles of potential employees before hiring. Job site CareerBuilder.com found that over 20 percent of the employers surveyed on their site viewed the social networking profiles of potential employees before hiring. If this did not convince Facebook users to adjust their privacy settings, then maybe Mom’s friend request will.

For most of the new converts to the site, Facebook isn’t about snooping on their children. The site allows for the 35+ crowd to easily keep in touch with hundreds of friends, a task that was daunting using previous methods like email or phone calls. The older generation is proving that they, too, are ready to embrace the new forms of communication and social interactions to which the college crowd has grown accustomed.

As parents join the ranks of social networking sites like Facebook, perhaps the best approach is not to fight it, but try and lay down some ground rules first. After all, parents should know that posting your baby pictures or poking your friends just is not going to fly. Setting some privacy settings may help, but in most cases won’t be necessary. Still, Mom needs something to do now that she can no longer look through your backpack.