How can young people use Facebook?

[Caulking-Gunn]

How can young people use Facebook? None of them even know how to read a BOOK. All they know is how to push buttons on battery eating gadgets that beep. And since not too many older people use Facebook. Who is really using it? In other words, how can Facebook claim they have so many users?

The last time I went to the library, I saw a young boy trying to push the letters on the cover of the book. When nothing beeped, he opened the book cover looking for the place where the batteries go. It must be the "Face" part that they want. After all, most of these young kids spend hours looking at their face in the mirror, and admiring themselves! In brief, if they're not looking at some electronic gadget with buttons, they're looking in a mirror......

[rbowman]

Actually, Facebook is tending toward an older user base. It's soooooo 2013 the kids are losing interest. Anything Mom uses to trade recipes with her sister in DesMoines has to suck.

[micky]

I have a friend about 50 who belongs under her real name and again under a phony name.

I just belong under a phony name.

[Lee B]

Yeah, I have a FB account under my home email to communicate with friends etc. And another under my work email for work related contacts. I'm sure FB wouldn't approve, but oh well. I also know of people who have a semi-anonymous account that they use to enter contests etc, because so many of that type of site wants access to people's friends lists etc and people don't want that shared. Lots of businesses have FB pages, and are always trying to get people to like them by having contests, promising discounts and such, so I think a lot of people who don't regularly use FB do have accounts.

I've read several places though that the younger members have since migrated to Twitter and Instagram, now that the oldies have taken up FB. That's probably true... I'm an oldie and have no interest in Twitter or Instagram.

[micky]

I have this image that I can't get rid of, that to access Twitter, you need something the shape of a BIC lighter. Since I don' t have that, I ignore Twitter.

I've been meaning to look at Instagram and maybe I will in a few years.

I only have one FB friend, my 20 y.o. niece. I love her and once in a while her page is really interesting, like when she spent a college semester in Europe and went to Turkey with someone in her class -- I'll ask her abou tthat when I see her -- but most of the time, it's so boring.

And FB emails me almost every day to tell me she's done something (small), posted something, changed her picture, most of which is borrring. If I had 20 friends of 200 like some of these kids do, would they email me 20 or 200 times a day?

[Lee B]

This might help -

"F.B. Purity - Clean Up and Customize Facebook" I downloaded it several months ago and it filters out a lot of stuff you don't want to see. I have mine set to filter out sponsored stories, games, people you may know, trending topics, who became friends, who joined a group and some other stuff.

It's an add-on for several different browsers. Biggest problem they have is that Facebook doesn't like them filtering things out, so keeps changing formats etc and this poor guy has to keep modifying the program. It's free, but I actually made a small donation to encourage him to continue.

Unfortunately it doesn't filter out everything that I personally find annoying (photos of someone's lunch etc) that shows up on my newsfeed, but it helps to reduce the rest of the clutter.