Response to "Born Digital"

The description between the generation gap of the digital natives, digital immigrants and digital settlers couldn't have been more true. I spent the whole time reading this article laughing my butt off. I would like to say that I have a fairly decent understanding of how digital media works. My mom on the other hand though couldn't be further opposite. When she got her first smart phone, she affectionately called it her "genius phone" because of its capabilities. And one year, her New Year's Resolution was to create a Facebook page. In May she finally figured out how to get onto the website that is so difficultly named "www.facebook.com" For the new six months, I had to teach and reteach her her password, where the status bar was, and that someones wall was different from a personal message.

My grandpa, on the other hand, learned how to navigate Facebook too quickly. My grandpa has over 2,000 Facebook friends, only knowing about 5% of them personally. For example, I have a cousin (on my other side of the family, mind you) who lives in California. My cousin has a girlfriend who my family has never met, yet Grandpa added her on Facebook the day they became "Facebook Official." ... Yup, he's that guy. He has no sense of boundaries when it comes to Facebook either. Now that he's retired, he spends all day on Facebook, and takes up 98% of most people's newsfeeds by sharing literally every picture he sees,  commenting on them, and posting the exact same status every night (which reads "Great day with My facebook friends, good Night and God Bless.) And yes,  that horrible capitalization is a direct quote. When introducing myself to people around town, I have to constantly answer to the question, "Are you related to Ken LeGreve... you know, the Facebook one?" And my response is always, "I wish I could say no." A vast majority of the people my grandpa adds end up blocking him (and I will admit, I've even blocked my own bloodline as well) because when I tried to simply delete him, he re-added me within 10 minutes. I don't know how he noticed one friend out of 2,000 had disappeared so fast, but it's just too much.

It is so fair to say that different generations interact with digital medias differently. And while some people say that the internet needs to have a minimum age of use, it's probably equally fair to say that there should be a maximum age of use as well ;)