I am on Facebook quite a bit. I love having been able to stay connected (and get reconnected) with childhood friends, former co-workers and colleagues, and with current and former students. I also love getting to know current acquaintances better, especially friends from the theatre and music.
But I think I'm an outlier (according to this piece in the NYTimes). I note three things from that article and graph:
- Not so many old(er) people are on Facebook. And if they are, my guess is that they have a few family, neighbour, and former co-worker friends, but not hundreds.
- Take a look at the scatter plot below called "a detailed look at how people meet friends on Facebook". There are a lot of connections made through summer camp, but there seem to be so few made through work that they don't even show up.
- Many of my newer FB friends are from the theatre, where we work intensely for a few months and then go our separate ways. These are probably what the graph refers to as one-time events (and analogous to summer camp?).
These results make sense for younger people. They see people at work everyday; there is less need to FB-friend them, too, to maintain contact with them. But when they change jobs, that's when FB-friending becomes important, sort of like summer camp: you enjoyed being with many of them, and you don't want to lose touch with them. FB is a great way to stay in contact.
Wait 'til other "under-90"s join FB and begin to dominate it.