Facebook and Twitter for the Baby Boomer Generation

Last year I became active in both Twitter and Facebook. There were many reports that baby boomers had become a fast-growing segment in social media. I joined up for both personal and business (blogging) reasons.

I soon discovered that Twitter was more about self-promotion than about exchange of valuable information. Most of my Twitter followers were other bloggers promoting their own writing. The personal information I received was uninteresting and none of it pertained to people that I knew other than online. I received some helpful tips from large businesses with whom I had purchased items but nothing that could not be found from a less time-consuming source. I tried running searches inside Twitter for helpful information, all of which were unsuccessful.

Late last year I stopped posting on Twitter. Even then I continued to receive messages that another self-promoter was now “following” me. In other words, I didn’t have to tweet anything to add followers. That should tell you something about the Twitter wasteland right there.

I continued to check Twitter periodically but earlier this year I stopped doing that. The time invested in Twitter generated almost zero positive return on either a business or personal level. I still have new people following me each week. I don’t know any of them and they have nothing from me to follow. They just want me to follow them back. That is not going to happen.

Facebook was a better experience but not by much. At least I know most of my Facebook friends (including relatives) in real life. The problem is that 90% of what they say in Facebook is trivia. It’s not even worth my time to read. I found myself hiding updates from more and more “friends.” Other information posted fell into a TMI category – stuff that does not belong in a semi-public forum. People who post work-related information on Facebook (including some of my relatives) probably deserve to be fired.

I also found the privacy shenanigans inside Facebook – carried out by Facebook leadership in the name of dominating the web – to be disgraceful

I recently finished reading “The Four Hour Work Week.” I will be writing more about that in the near future. One of the lessons taught in that book is how much our lives are bogged down by information overload. I’m talking about information that does not enhance our lives. I decided that Facebook fell into that category. Just connecting to see if there was anything interesting to read (usually not the case) took too much of my time.

So last week I deactivated my Facebook account. I haven’t missed it at all. It is liberating not to be annoyed by the time wasted reading unimportant information.

So fellow boomers: What is your assessment of Twitter and Facebook on a personal level?

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