More and more adults join Facebook
EUGENE, Ore. -- Ella Wilson loves checking in with friends on Facebook.
The South Eugene freshman She has about 480 "friends" or people she keeps track of on the popular social networking site.
But recently the 14 year old got a new Facebook friend: her mom.
Jerril Nilson, a Eugene graphic designer, signed up for Facebook in January. She now has 120 friends and is hooked.
Nilson is the typical new face of Facebook. In the last four months, the number of U.S. women over 35 who've joined Facebook has grown 154 percent, according to Facebook. Older men are also joining at a record pace, increase 138 percent since October.
This is all part of Facebook's massive growth, ballooning to 175 million users.
And 45 percent of those Facebook users are older than 25.
"I love it," Nilson said. "I can send things to my friends that are silly or interesting or mind expanding for the moment."
The Facebook prompt of "What are you doing" relays news back to her about a friend who just returned from a whale watching. The stream of pictures, video, notes and Web links allows her to share more easily than by phone or email.
"This is faster," she said. "It's more fun."
The surge in older adult started not long after Facebook gave users more security control. You can limit who sees your profile and even create special groups. That way when you share old big hair high school pictures, not everyone at work can see.
"It feels much safer," Nilson said.
She has found classmates, connected with nieces, and learned about friends' passions and politics.
She also discovered on Facebook that her daughter has a boyfriend.
"I sometimes regret letting her be my friend on Facebook, but it's OK," Wilson said of her mom. "I just monitor myself."
And Nilson can feel connected with just a matter of clicks.
"I think people are just ready to find out what's going on in the world and be a community," she said.
