January 2009 Archives

My 20-something colleagues here seem to be pretty shocked to discover that adult use of social networking sites like Facebook is exploding all around them. I find that as a 30-something back in school, being surrounded by 20-somethings can be equally disturbing at times.

The explosion of 30+ users on sites like Facebook is hardly surprising. Especially after you consider the large number of adults who are returning to universities and colleges in droves, as the failing economy forces them to reconsider careers, retrain for job security, or just find a new direction for their lives.

They say that 30 is the new 20

Traditional college students everywhere are coming to the realization that potential employers could be viewing their party habits. They're bitching about the creep-factor of adults on turf they unrealistically considered to be theirs alone. Meanwhile, non-traditional students like myself are shaking our heads and saying, "duh!"

It's the Web people. What could possibly make you think it was your turf,? After all, we 30-somethings invented it. What ever gave you the impression that Facebook wouldn't want us? We've got more disposable income than you do. If you want to point fingers, point them at Facebook, not us. We just know a good thing when we see it, and we've got social lives too.

Besides, with 30 being the new 20, we've been granted something pretty amazing... the social acceptance to act like 20-somethings, clinging to the "greatest years of our life" for as long as we can. Are you really going to hold that against us?

In fact, it seems I could easily be the poster boy for the 30-going-on-20 phenomenon. I dress like a 20-something. I travel like a 20-something. I drive like a 20-something. (Okay, that's never really likely to change.) Heck, I'm even dating a 20-something. But apparently, none of that really counts. The real benchmark? I use Facebook. Damn.

How Facebook hooked me

Last summer I took a trip to Ireland. It was an adventure I had been dreaming about for many years. Between semesters, the pieces fell into place, and it all came true. But when I got home, I quickly realized that e-mails to all the friends I had made were never going to keep me in touch with them for long. Moreover, nobody uses MySpace over there, and I was already getting sick of the awful templates, obnoxious apps and leetspeak that comes with its predominately teen userbase. So I made the leap to Facebook, which most of my foreign friends were already on.

Better options?

Sadly, while the obnoxious apps have since infiltrated Facebook, it's still the best option out there to stay connected with friends. I'm sure a 30-something social network will reach critical mass eventually to fill the demand for the impressive 35% of Facebook users who will tire of 20-somethings hassling them to get off their turf. Until then, you're just stuck with us.

Especially since Facebook added new privacy features also make it the choice for adults who need more "separation" between work and play.

Also interesting to see will be how Facebook changes once the percentage of users over 21 reaches that critical 70% mark, enabling alcoholic beverage makers to advertise there. That might be the breaking point where the "kids" are forced to accept that they're outnumbered. Of course, by then, Facebook will likely have long been left to us old folks for something newer and shinier.

I'm changing my name on Facebook due to the overwhelming amount of adults who are "friending" me. My profile picture is of me posing in front of a giant wooden penis and I don't want to change it. It cracks me up every time I log in and there I am standing next to a penis twice my size. It's meant to make my friends laugh and it presents a picture of me. I'm inappropriate and immature but that doesn't mean I don't take work or school seriously. 

Here's my point, the vice president of Saatchi & Saatchi, my aunt Marcia, added me as a friend on Facebook. I'm supposed to have an interview with her for a job and a lot of what I do on Facebook is not work place appropriate. Besides my profile picture, I post Youtube videos of explicit rap songs by Ludacris and Lil Wayne. My about me says something like, "I enjoy baby birds and speed traps." All my pictures are pretty much of me smoking and boozing like a hound. Lets just say my Facebook page doesn't present a good picture of me. 

I can just imagine our interview now. "So Nina, you like cigs, booze and dicks? You want a job?" Well, I hope that's what happens. But seriously, do I need to modify my Facebook? One of my professors in the J-school said your Facebook page is a great opportunity to market yourself if you can control what your friends post. Well my Facebook page looks nothing like my resume and I don't want it to. So there it is, the adults are going to have to love it or leave it. And when they leave it, I hope they are repulsed by my profile.   

When I was a sophomore in high school, my mother registered her own Xanga account. Remember Xanga? It might as well be a rotary phone now, but six years ago it was the big thing. I'm not sure what compelled her to get a Xanga account, but I remember being mortified that she had one and was especially careful about what I posted online.

There's generally kind of a 'creeper' vibe when people above our age demographic have their own social networking sites. Yet at the same time, I remember rolling my eyes when my parents didn't know what Facebook or Twitter were. We're operating on a double standard: Adults who use social networking sites are weird, but adults who don't know such sites exist are dinosaurs.

A recent Pew study found that 19% of adults ages 45-54 have a social networking profile of some kind. I guess it helps to remember that adults have friends, too, and what works for us would logically work for them. The Pew study concluded that 97% of Facebook users cited friendly communication as their primary purpose for joining the site. As such, I think it's important for us as journalists to remember that older people use these sites for the same reason we do. It shouldn't keep us from doing anything that we might otherwise do, multimedia-wise, for our own demographic. Remember that these people do use social networking sites, and we can't overlook that when trying to reach them.

According to a recent Pew Internet report, the number of adults using social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Myspace has more than quadrupled in the past four years. Though this has put countless teenagers in an extremely awkward position, the increase is a good thing for young journalists, presenting exciting new opportunities as these sites become more functional in convergent media presentations.

Though the media have already been experimenting with using social networking sites for news events, such as last year's presidential race, the sites have generally been used to represent the voice of America's youth. This comes with good reason, as the Pew report shows that 65 percent of online American teens use these sites.

But the rapid increase in adult users means that when the media use data from social networking Web sites, it does not just represent young people; it speaks for everyone. And this will only become more accurate in the future, as the number of adult users continues to grow.

The use of social networking sites will allow multimedia news organizations to enhance their presentations. News Web sites are currently able to instantly provide audio, photo and video to users, but social networking sites have the potential provide even more: the opinions, ideas and reactions of millions of people.

Last Tuesday, CNN used Facebook's Connect feature, which allows Facebook users to include their profile data on other Web sites, in its coverage of the presidential inauguration with great success.

If the CNN staff wanted to, they could use the Facebook Lexicon program to follow up with information on how the public has reacted to President Barack Obama's first few days in office. Since January 20, his sentiment score has been more than 80 percent, meaning that out of all conversations on Facebook mentioning President Obama, 80 percent spoke of him favorably.

Social networking sites will allow journalists to incorporate their audience into news coverage more than ever before, and allow the the public to see how the people around them feel about what is going on the world. To me, that is something to be excited about.

 

Personally, the increase of adults using social networking sites is shocking, yet disturbing.  What young adult in their right mind would want their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to view their social network profile?  Much less a prospective employer?  However for professional reasons it means new beginnings, opportunities with the possibility of more jobs to accommodate for these new social networking users.

 

I created my Facebook profile as a freshman in college completely oblivious to the fact that someday I would have to put up privacy settings to keep family members off of my profile.  As a freshman, I had pictures on Facebook that I did not want my parents to see, but lesson learned, an extended family member had printed off my profile pictures and mailed them to my parents.  Incredible. I didn't even think anybody in my family over the age of 25 knew about social networking, especially Facebook.  Now according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project adults on social networking sites has quadrupled since 2005.  The rise of adults on these sites is a scary thought for me.  I have now seen numerous adults on Facebook, including relatives, friend's parents, aunts, uncles and teachers from high school.  As a journalism student who is about to graduate in May I have been forced to alter my profile because I don't want people to compare my profile to the work I produce for KUJH-TV and the Kansan.com. 

 

Setting myself apart from a young adult who does not want their parents or future employers to view my Facebook page as a journalist I know that this means more opportunities.  These opportunities for a journalist include a larger, broader audience to be targeted.  With growing numbers of adults ranging in age more diversity in the news will be necessary.  Yes that means more work for us journalists but what a chance to broaden our horizons and express new creativity to entice all generations to explore the Web and what it has to offer them.  Adults can get up-to-date news online now instead of waiting for the evening newscasts.  Advertisers can get excited about the increase of adults in social networks because this means MORE advertising and more diverse clients.

 

As a future multimedia producer, the increase of adults in social networks provides new beginnings for the Web.  This means that no longer can multimedia projects be targeted towards just young adults and teens but now must be targeted towards all ages of adults.  As a multimedia producer I can only hope that as adults explore social networks on the Web that they too will discover getting their news from the Web and interact with Web sites.  A difficulty of targeting adults could be making projects that are simple enough for them to interact with or enticing enough for them to take time out of their busy schedules to engage with a Web site.  A multimedia producer must understand that not all adults are Web savvy or even have the time to explore the Web. 

 

As a student, I see the growing number of adults of social networking sites as an irritation.  It's another way for family members to be too nosy or invasive.  Yet as a professional journalist and multimedia producer I see these adults becoming an opportunity for my profession that will open new doors and yet again advance journalism on the Web.

I created my facebook profile in July 2005 and by January 2006 I was already creeped out.

Innocent deceit?

My grandma hates pictures of herself. She despises them. At the sight of a camera, she buries her face in her arm. Ironically, she recently got a Facebook. But, in place of her own face as her profile picture, is a baby lamb.



When she joined Facebook, my grandma also joined multitudes of users who carefully and skillfully create a pseudo-identity via the Web.
Through social networking sites like Facebook, you can effectively boil who you are down to a profile page and catchy album titles. We pick a few favorite quotes to adorn our page--hopefully a good variety of inspirational and side-splittingly funny--post a cute status and we're good to go.

iGeneration

Call us Generation Y or Millennials, it's all the same. We are a bunch of tech-savvy, gadget-loving, self-promoters -- and there's nothing inherently wrong with that!
We have an image to keep and we know how to do it best. It didn't happen if it's not on Facbeook, right? You could almost say Facebook rules the world. Well, our world, at least. 
While social networking sites do just what they say, provide an excellent medium for connecting and communicating, they also enable us to wield on our audience a level of deception about who we really are. And adults are catching on.
We find it shocking that our parents and grandparents are now on Facebook, but soon, we too will find ourselves in the category of adults who use social networks.



YOUR MOM reads your wall. Seriously.

A 400 percent increase in adult users on social networking sites seems like a large swell now, but it's only going to increase as our generation, those born from 1982 to 2000, ages.
Many members of my generation perceive adult users on social networks as not to be trusted, creepy, and inept. This perception will certainly shift, as we ourselves become the middle-aged Facebook stalkers browsing through our cousin's girlfriend's pictures at 2 a.m.

When I came to KU in the fall of 2007, I quickly noticed many of my professors had profiles on Facebook. My first reaction was something along the lines of "OMG, what the [heck] are you doing on my interweb!?"




 I chalked it up to few tech-savvy professors keeping up with the latest trends. But as time went by I began receiving friend requests from friend's parents--even one grandparent! In the past year, the number of my Facebook friends over the age of thirty has steadily increased. Facebook has begun courting the over thirty crowd to grow its network.


 


As a graduate student in journalism, who spends many waking hours studying the motivations behind using new media, I couldn't help but notice the differences between older Facebook users and their younger counterparts.

Those of us who have grown up with social networking sites have a tendency to share too much information with the world. Older users getting acquainted with social networking sites are more reserved in what information they choose to share. No racy pictures, no obnoxious wall posts and less information in general. Younger users may be tempted to say this is because adults lead boring lives...

In this instance, I think many of us can learn from our elders. Sometimes less is more, more professional that is.

Five Do's and Don'ts of Facebook:

• Unless married, don't post your relationship status. With a 50 percent divorce rate it's still a bad idea. And for pete's sake, never put "It's complicated!" 
• Don't post pictures of you and others engaging in illegal activity...duh.
  
• Do make sure your privacy settings are enabled--I recommend limiting it to your immediate friends.
  
• Do Google yourself on a regular basis--it sounds dirty but it's really quite harmless...
• Do consider your audience, this is social media after all. Only post information and tag pictures you feel are an accurate reflection of you.

In my opinion, Facebook is much more important than professional networking sites such as Linkedin. Your Facebook profile is a history of your online life and your "social resume."

I had to do it. A few weeks ago I got rid of my facebook. I did this unspeakable act for a number of reasons.

1) Facebook can be a waste of time. I would spend more time checking my friend's statuses and trying to think of the perfect "about me" than doing my school work or even seeing those same friends. The only "networking"  I did was posting funny videos on my friends wall.

2) The growing number of adults signing up. Though my profile is very private, or so it seems, not everything on facebook is in my control. Say I have a friend who befriends with my mom on facebook, not all that likley, perhaps it is a longtime friend and he is adding her to be nice. His profile is not set to private and he posts photos of a night out on the town.

As a disclaimer I do not live a wild secret life of beer, parties and debauchery, but there are just some things I do not want my mom to see. I could de tag these photos, but my mom would still have acess to them.

3) Facebook owns your photos! I do not want my photos used in advertisements without my permission. This is very scary!

It only took a few days for me to crack. I needed all the useless information about my friends and I needed a distraction from school. Perhaps one day I will be strong enough to let go, but not today. And also I need to find out who threw a digital snowball at me.

Some of my best friends are friends from high school.  The problem is, we all don't have a lot of extra time to catch up regularly.  But with Facebook, I can stay updated on who got a new job, or see pictures from a spring break getaway.

Recently, when my aunt requested to be my friend, I had no qualms about accepting.  A quick scan of the posts on her wall made what I already knew apparent: Adults are increasingly joining social networking sites to reconnect with friends and family.  

My aunt lives in India, so I'm glad that I can keep in touch with her on Facebook.  However some of my peers don't like the idea of being cyber friends with Mom or Dad.  What are they so scared of?  A lack of privacy would be my first guess.  Yet, when it comes to putting information about yourself on the Internet, you have little privacy from anyone, anyway.

For example, last year I met a guy at a friend's birthday party.  The conversation went sort of like this:

Me: Hi, I'm Deepa.

Guy: Yeah, I think we've met before.  You look familiar.

Me:  Really?  I don't think so; I'm pretty good at remembering people.

Guy: Oh, you're right.  I think I've just seen a lot of pictures of you on Facebook.

Though the exchange left me feeling a tad uncomfortable, I shocked myself when I realized that this probably wasn't a unique incident.  I wondered, how many students at KU could recognize another student they've never met, just from seeing them on Facebook or MySpace?  I would much rather have my mom click though photos of me than some random person who just happened to stumble on my page.

That idea also begs the question: If more and more adults are joining social networking sites, are they too, going to be stumbling on my Facebook page?

I would guess no, unless they were actually "friends" of mine.  But it is true that some adults who you wouldn't expect to see your profile know what your hobbies are and which groups you're in.  Almost a quarter of employers check social networking sites when deciding whether to hire a new employee.  Of those, 34 percent chose to pass on a prospective employee based on the information on his or her page. 

How can you keep your favorite time waster and ensure you're not risking future opportunities?  The solution is easy.  Monitor yourself and notch up your privacy settings (which should be done anyway, regardless of an expanding Facebook clientele.) Beware of sharing too much information on a profile.  It isn't worth loosing a job to let your friends know that you are "soo hungover from partyin all weekend... screw class!"

I suppose I should feel fortunate my parents have yet to cross over into the realm of online social networking. Instead, they're still content with learning the intricacies of surfing the 'net and typing in Word documents.

But the PEW research information does raise some interesting questions regarding the increased use of social networking sites by adults. Mostly, it left me wondering what I could do to combat the two worlds (mine and theirs) from colliding in the online world.

The first thing to consider is the topic of etiquette in the world of social networking. I'm fine with increased use of Facebook and MySpace among adults, but that doesn't mean we're obligated to make our own social network pages available to them. To be honest, I've had friend requests from former teachers who I've turned down because it felt like I would be crossing some sort of un-drawn boundary.

I'm not ashamed of any photos they might see. But it's my world, and I have the right to separate myself from whomever I choose. Facebook is a strange world, and once you allow access to others, they can read wall messages, see whom you're friends with, online message you and generally invade your online territory.

Of course, this is being overly dramatic. Most people do not take the time to pour over a specific profile for every minute detail, but it is something to be considered.

I've heard people say that one should consider the grandma test when it comes to online social networking. In other words, if she would approve, then it's OK on your profile. But you know what? I'd like to think I could do a decent enough job of monitoring myself. I don't need to be Facebook friends with grandma to prove that.

The only example I can think of in regards to a mandatory friending would be if a prospective employee demanded it in order to determine a hire. In which case, I probably wouldn't want to work for them anyway.

It was a few weeks ago, and I did what many would think was the unthinkable: I added my mother on Facebook.

The Good

During the past several months I seem to have become decently popular. I say this because I've acquired at least 14 new friends without even going out much.

Did I mention they're all family?

Sweet.

Older adults jumping on the social networking bandwagon has hit my extended family. I've heard many students and friends gripe about the death of school-related Facebook. I don't really mind.

I'm from Minnesota. Almost everyone in my entire extended family lives there. I go to school in Kansas. That said, I'd admit I don't get home for every family event. I've missed anniversaries, births, engagement parties, breast cancer support events; I've missed a lot. Now my aunts, uncles and cousins can keep me in the loop when I can't make it home. The recent addition of my family members to my list of friends has been a welcome, albeit somewhat strange, happening.
 
The Bad

Social networking sites are supposed to allow you to be social. Sites like Facebook seem to be doing the opposite. What happened to the good, old-fashioned phone call?
 
The face-to-face chat?

Meeting and making friends outdoors?

Those things are going by the wayside. They're losing out to friend requests, Facebook messaging, pokes and tag requests. It's just easier. You don't have to worry about saying something stupid or having that horrible awkward silence. You can take your time (although some don't) and compose your thoughts in a clear and concise way. You can say exactly what you want in exactly the way you want to.

But how is sitting alone at home social?

The Ugly

Facebook lets would-be adults live in Neverland.  How many times are we going to hear about people getting in trouble for Facebook-related problems? The social networking sites are proving to have an equally antisocial side.
 
I consider many social networking sites to be the equivalent of reality TV for the average person. You can creep around and see what everyone is doing, who they're doing it with and even where they're doing it. It's taking away personal privacy and in many cases, self respect.

I'll admit I'm guilty too. I've posted my fair share of pictures I'll never remember taking. I've had friends on Facebook I've never met in person.

The Truth

The recent trend showing older adults joining networking sites is a positive thing. It will help bridge the generational gaps, connecting people who otherwise wouldn't connect. It will help hold people accountable at a time in their lives when they usually choose not to be.  

        The shift of my parents' generation to using social networking sites doesn't bother me in the least, it just has completely changed the landscape of what social networking sites are like. 

As a college senior, it's probably easy to guess that my social network of choice is Facebook. When I joined Facebook the summer after I graduated high school in 2005, the site was only for college students. If one wanted to have a profile and view the site, a college email was required. Being the big dork I am, I signed up for Facebook just days after I received my KU email to see what all my older friend had been talking about. What I found was exactly what you'd expect from a site which allowed college students to post content without the discretion of older people. Friends posted photo albums that not only showed underaged people holding alcohol, but teens doing keg stands, beer bongs, and all the other so called college rights of passage. Students joined Facebook groups with titles like "I drink, I party, and dammit, I'm awesome!" and "When life hands you lemons, break out the tequila and salt!" You get the picture. It was like Facebook was the new last frontier. Anything could go up there and no one cared at all. This didn't bother one bit. In fact, seeing people I knew from high school and the dorms make fools of themselves and post the pictures to prove it was definitely a form of entertainment for me. 

As Facebook continued to grow in popularity, things started to change. First, Facebook allowed anyone to have an account. This was a natural move, as the more people with accounts presumably meant the more money the site made from advertising. Though the old people seemed to be slow to join the site, they made their presence known once they arrived. First, I started hearing horror stories of people going in to job interviews only to be shown pictures their employers found on Facebook of them doing god-knows-what at a party the weekend before. If this wasn't bad enough, rumors started floating around that police and school administrators in certain communities were using pictures from Facebook to hand out punishments for underage drinking. All of this sounded bad, but things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Parents started joining Facebook! Every party going college student's worst nightmare had come true. Parents could log on, and with proper access, could see little Johnny at his first college party with his beer goggles on. Pictures started to be detagged. Profiles became private, and the last frontier nature of Facebook pretty much went away. 

My parents do not have Facebook, as both are the definition of computer illiterate. But I do have two aunts that have Facebook, and I'd be pretty uncomfortable with them seeing a lot of the photos some people have had up if it was me in the photos instead of them. Luckily for me, my fairly boring responsible nature has meant that there's been no negative to the influx of old people on social networking sites. However, the kegstanders I'm friends with probably had a lot of work to do when they got the notification that said "(Your Mom's Name Here) has added you as a friend." Perhaps they will just have to find a new last frontier online.

I've decided that part of the reason that I don't consider myself an adult is due to my Facebook account. (I guess I just don't think that my discussions of "What'd you do this weekend?" or "Did you see so-and-so's photo album?" on the networking site qualify as highly intellectual or mature.)
So, you can imagine how strange it was for me when I started getting requests from former teachers or family members asking me to be their friend on Facebook.
I hesitantly accepted, thinking that they probably were just using their accounts for business purposes or other grown-up reasons. But as I explored their Facebook pages, I realized that they actually were using it for the same reason as me: to socialize.
A PEW Internet & American Life report proves this same "personal use over professional use" trend.

The future of news sites
So, what does this mean for future journalists, such as myself, if more people are joining these social networks?
Speaking from experience, I would think that adults do or will eventually travel to these social networking sites as often as news Web sites.
It's not hard to guess why. Social networking sites provide people of any age a personalized experience - something that news Web sites don't always promise.
The site eMarketer specifically looks at trends in online usage for media. Carol Krol, senior analyst for the agency, talks about where she thinks newspapers are headed in an interview with ReelSEO that is helpful for news sites.
Along with more emphasis on multimedia features, news Web sites should take notice to this trend of more adults joining social networks. A merge of the two types of sites - news and social network - could be the ultimate Web site.

A step in the right direction
A Web site for all needs can really be a time saver.
A good example of how great this ultimate Web site could be is what Google offers to its Google e-mail users. With a G-mail account, you're able to chat with your friends who are also online, personalize your account with different theme variations, post photo albums online that your friends can view and even read the news.
With its Google Reader setting, Google allows you to subscribe to Web sites, then each time you log in, show you what headlines you have missed since the last time you logged in. Depending on the headline, you can click to read more or simply keep scrolling until you see something you want to read.
The quality of newspaper Web sites would improve in this type of competitive environment.
People need to know what is going on - whether it's going on between their friends or family or out in the world in which they live. More one-stop Web sites need to be developed in order to fulfill this need.

	Carnez Williams wants to be your friend
	Note to my fellow youth: don't be alarmed when your parents, grandparents and professors add you as a friend on Facebook. They're probably just trying to get reconnected to the information and technology often associated social networking sites. In fact, their attention might be fixed more so on getting reconnected with the youth (ages 18 to 24), politics and technology than on those drunken NCAA Championship pictures you're hiding on your restricted Facebook page. Take it from someone who has experienced the phenomena - not being drunk in an NCAA Championship picture, of course.
	My Dad wants to be my Facebook friend
	Monday my dad called me and delivered some pretty shocking news: he was getting a Facebook page. After hearing the cinematic "dun-dun-dun" sound in my head, I asked him why he wanted to do something like that. He said that after learning from CNN's Anderson Cooper that the presidential inauguration would be streaming live on Facebook from CNN made him realize just how out of the loop he was when it came to new media. He didn't have a Facebook page or know how to get one. Having a page would allow him to keep a pulse not just on youth and youth culture, but also to stay connected with his friends and other world issues. More, he just wanted to be a part of the Facebook craze.
	Baby Boomers are quickly becoming the new face of Facebook (Mildly Exaggerated)
	Apparently, my dad, 42, isn't the only adult who feels this way about Facebook and other social networking sites. Adults, now more than ever are getting Facebook pages to get reconnected not just with youth and youth culture, but also with politics and friends. According to a December 2008 report in Pew Internet & American Life Project, adult social networking site users have quadrupled in the past four years, from 8 percent in 2005 to 35 percent in 2008. Even more interesting, the report found adults use social networks more than their youth counterparts, mostly because they make up a larger portion of the United States population than teens. That's partly why the report said the more than 35 percent of adult users represents a larger number than the 65 percent of teen users. Most of these people, old and young, use these sites to communicate with people and for social and new media exchanges. Since Facebook was created in 2004, it has allowed people to send one another messages, share photos and join groups and events all over. This year's broadcast of the presidential inauguration was just another example of the social networking innovations that bring communities together at events while interacting socially. That longing for community is partly why all people, young and old, have begun taking advantage of this social networking site and others like it.
	Facebook brings us together, no matter what our ages
	My dad asking me how to get a Facebook page further exemplifies how the site has acted as a vehicle for the old and young alike to reach out to one another and stay connected with their interests. That was the best part of our interaction. My dad reached out to me to help him get connected to the use of new media in politics and in the process we did too. In that moment I gained a new respect for him, and for adults everywhere who want to hear what the youth have to say, starting with Facebook.