Teens: It’s OUR Facebook!

The Oct. 4 issue of USA Today has an article by Janet Kornblum called "Teens: It’s Our Facebook." In the article, Kornblum describes the reaction of one teen when her parenting expert and author mom wrote "umamaluvsu" on her Facebook wall. As Tess Lippincott put it, "I definitely don’t want her to be posting on my wall and having all my friends being like ‘Is that your mom?’ It’s weird."

At least HER mom wasn’t masquerading as a dog. My daughter’s friends found some of my early versions of Jolie Vandal the Law Library mascot. "Is your mom on MySpace, pretending to be a dog?" Well, heck, even MySpace wouldn’t allocate space to a 2-year-old labradoodle. (What’s a librarian mother to do?)

While talking about teens and parents, Kornblum reported some amazing statistics. Facebook counts of active users (those who have used the system in the last 30 days) have increased from 130,000 in 2004 to 43 million in September 2007. Amazing!