GRAND Magazine - May 2009 - (Page 34)

Face-toFacebook Grands gone wild…sort of By NoreNe Kelly “ I ’m just a born snoop with a built-in ‘need to know’ about those I love,” says Linda Ling, who lives near Dallas, Texas. Don’t all of us like to be in on the scoop? And today, the grapevine has gone high tech. Social networking sites have transformed how we communicate and keep in touch; Facebook, adding a million users—“friends”—a week in the U.S. (and even more around the world), is the leader. And the fastest-growing demographic? Us. Women over 55. Ling uses Facebook to keep up with her two oldest grandchildren, ages 20 and 17. Linda Ling can’t help herself when it comes to correcting grammar and sniffing about the g’kids’ obscenities. “I figure that if I see what they are writing to their friends and what their friends are writing to them, I can put two and two together and get some idea what’s up with them.” When her 20-year-old granddaughter spent a semester abroad in New Zealand, Ling especially appreciated the posted “wall photos” of daily life Down Under. What originally brought Ling to Facebook was her 50-year high school class reunion, when classmates used it as a handy connection tool. Ling says it’s “great to reconnect with friends from long ago and find out about them. We don’t see each other often for various reasons, but keeping in touch reminds us that we were young, single and carefree— even if we didn’t realize that at the time.” Ling says she cannot, however, ignore the downside of our brave new world of sharing. She admits to being “the grammar police and the obscenity ogre.” Fortunately for her grandkids, she does her policing in private notes rather than public posts. She also reminds them that “things [you] post…are ‘out there’ forever.” Jean Peelen, coauthor of Invisible No More: The Secret Lives of Women Over 50, is also mildly mortified by “lots of bad language” her 34 GRAND MAY 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GRAND Magazine - May 2009

GRAND Magazine - May 2009
GRAND View
Contents
GRAND Central
Watching Lily Bloom
GrandZ in the 'Hood'
Numbers Game
We're Taking In the G'Kids
Face-to-Facebook
SHMILY
Family Crews
Soul Food
Resources
GRAND Finale

GRAND Magazine - May 2009

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