{"id":3504,"date":"2009-07-08T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3504"},"modified":"2009-07-08T11:54:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T18:54:00","slug":"lunchtime-musings-friends-and-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3504","title":{"rendered":"Lunchtime Musings: Friends and Aging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s San Francisco Chronicle has an article that dovetails quite well with something I\u2019ve recently been thinking about. The article talks about Facebook, and how its user demographic is aging<\/a>. The issue is not that Facebook is losing younger users — they are still flocking to the site. But people 35 to 54 are now the biggest group on the site, and more importantly, are joining the site at a faster rate. For those that want the numbers, people 35 to 54 account for 28.2% of all U.S. users as of July; 24- to 34-year-olds represent 25.2%; 18-to-24 age group are 25.1% of users, down from 40.8% in January; and those 17 and under made up 9.8% of the Web site’s users, down from 13.5%. Why are these (ahem) older folks joining Facebook? It\u2019s not to play MyFarm or Lil\u2019 Green Thing. It appears they are joining to network, to find long-lost friends, to build or rebuild relationships from high school or earlier. <\/p>\n

This goes to what I\u2019ve been thinking about. As my father aged, I noted he was more curious about, and spent more time and effort researching, what happened to his Navy buddies. Letters were written, visits were made. I\u2019ve noticed I\u2019m doing the same thing as I approach 50: I wanted to go to high school reunions, I wanted to find long lost friends. (However, I\u2019ll note this isn\u2019t common: my wife has expressed no desire to find out what happened to those she knew in high school). This desire has intensified as I have gone through my dad\u2019s albums (70+ condensed to 10; I need to order more binders). I\u2019ve seen people from elementary school and early JHS days, when I lived in Westchester — and reconnected with a couple. I actually joined Classmates, and have been attempting to reconnect with other folks from JHS and high school (some I have found on Facebook, some I can\u2019t seem to find, and some I\u2019m not sure I was close enough with to friend). I\u2019ve also done some reconnecting at the college level, although surprisingly it appears a lot of the UCLA Computer Club folk aren\u2019t<\/i> on Facebook (odd, for folks that have been on the Internet since it started). I\u2019ve made a few college connections, and sent some mail out to others I haven\u2019t heard from in ages. <\/p>\n

In doing so, something strange is happening. I\u2019m remembering things. For the longest time, I had very few memories of college, high school, jr. high school, and elementary days. One or two incidents. As I reconnect, it\u2019s coming back… and these are the good memories, for folks seem to want to forget any bad times (I certainly do). Thus, I\u2019m happy this is happening. Reestablishing friendships is a good thing, especially for someone like me that didn\u2019t establish a lot of close friendships. I plan to continue reconnecting, as I can find folks… or they find me.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m curious about whether this is a \u201cjust me\u201d phenomenon (do do do do do<\/a>), or whether others do the same. For those of you who are 25 years or more out of high school: are you starting to feel the urge to reconnect? How are you doing it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s San Francisco Chronicle has an article that dovetails quite well with something I\u2019ve recently been thinking about. The article talks about Facebook, and how its user demographic is aging. The issue is not that Facebook is losing younger users — they are still flocking to the site. But people 35 to 54 are now Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,22],"class_list":["post-3504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lj-xfer","tag-aging","tag-friends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}