It took me three days to collect 88 friends on Facebook . . . and four days to be ordered offline by my daughter.
I'd embarrassed her with a public scolding when I didn't like the swear word she used on the site. I didn't realize when I sent my message that it could be seen by all my Facebook friends, and my daughter's friends, and their friends . . . and everyone in the Facebook universe, to hear my daughter tell it.
I knew then that this social networking stuff isn't as easy as it looks.
And I understand now why 8,000 people have joined the group "For the love of god -- don't let parents join Facebook," where discussion board questions run like this: "how can one get there parents to leave facebook without pissing them off."
Bad news. You can't.
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I thought I was ahead of the curve when I joined Facebook in February. But it turns out middle-age women like me are the site's fastest-growing demographic.
Now, with 200 million members, Facebook is so yesterday. Twitter, it seems, is the new craze. Now I'm friending while everyone else is sending Tweets.
When I announced I'd joined, I got lots of advice in e-mails from readers about status messages and privacy settings. I also got a few laughs, courtesy of other clueless baby boomers.
Sheldon Kuna of Calabasas got "tagged" in a photo by one of his kids, but he didn't know what the heck that meant. He had nine friends -- all his children's pals -- on his Facebook list. When he turned 62, "two of them sent me birthday wishes, but I didn't know how to thank them," he said.
Christine Soderbergh's daughter greeted her friend request with "eww mom, I don't want you creeping around my space." Her son allowed her to friend him, and then telephoned to tell her "how to e-mail him so I wasn't on his wallpaper."
It's "wall," Christine, not "wallpaper." That's why they don't want us creeping around.
Some, like me, felt burdened by the constant status updates. Edna Ball, 59, of Whittier wondered why she should care "that an old high school acquaintance is making a big pot of fish stew in Ontario, Canada."
But others, like Mindy Atwood, were delighted. "It is a relief to just sit down and say 'Mindy is' something, anything and people seem to care!"
Key word, Mindy, seem to.
Most people like joining online groups, posting YouTube links and taking such quizzes as "Which color is your aura?" or "What kind of shoe defines you?"
