by Eileen Goldenberg

Created on: August 15, 2009

Twenty-ten. This may the year of the baby-boomers taking over Facebook. The average age of the Facebook user is still in their mid-twenties, but the fastest-growing user group is women 55 and over, up more than 200 percent since last year. I'm not quite in this category, just two years shy, but I was among the first of my friends to join over a year ago.

My motivation was an e-mail from a friend, stating that he had created a "Facebook Group" to promote a charity toy drive I had created. (It's an event that involves a "sleigh on wheels", and an authentic looking Santa Clause driving around the winding streets of the collection of islands I live on in Florida. We collect over 3,000 new toys for various charities.) Even though the event is well known now, and going on its eighth year, he extorted the advantages of promoting it on Face book. "I've made you the administer, and you can write about it and post pictures" The caveat, of course was, I had to actually join Facebook.

Did I really want to encroach the worlds of my teenage son and college-age daughter? They were both fairly horrified, and my husband was condescendingly amused. "Hey, it's just to promote the Toy Drive, and I'm not even putting up a picture of myself, it will just be the sleigh", I reassured them.

Within hours I had friends! Well, not exactly friends, but "friend requests".

I was happy to accept them, and gradually found myself adding personal information, filling in my stats, editing my profile, and yes, away went the sleigh photo as my "profile picture" and up went the most flattering but current ( within a couple years anyway) I could find.

I found it was a great way to promote other events I'm involved with, share interesting information I find on the internet, and even share moving and funny videos. (I'd been a Youtuber for years)

Before long, it seemed as if the whole middle -aged world had joined. "Moms on Facebook!" , I cackled to my kids, wondering if they (meaning their generation) would abandon Facebook to found some more selective social networking site.

I started to realize I had to become more selective about my friend requests. Who was this person that was "suggested to me" by Joe Classmate. I had not a clue.

And what about this person who wants to be my friend and uses his page to display his right-wing rants-that's no good.

Here's a friend and former co-worker who happens to be gay, and uses his page as kind of a pick-up place. I enjoyed the pictures of half-naked

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