So Nicole leaves us with facebook pessimism. I think it was a good decision. No need to sneak and create fake accounts and best of all the monitoring. Keep tabs on your kids out in the open rather than playing 'hacker' to find out the aliases. 

When I first showed my daughter an LP record, she thought it was a hilarious object.  Strange to see something so familiar through young eyes. 

@Nicole I really try to avoid situations in which I will be bombarded by dumb comments and will sometimes refrain from commmenting even to set thing straight because some people would rather consider themselves right than become aware of the facts. Happily, though, that is not the case here, in part thanks to really capable editors.

:) Glad to hear it! The Internet is filled with people to feel easily aggravated by. Fortunately, that's not at all the community we have here on Internet Evolution. You're all brilliant and wonderful!

I'm just one of those people who automatically thinks every negative thought or strange look pertains to me. Exhausting existence! Haha!

@Nicole, of course not. It wasn't here. The people on IE are far too intelligent to ever be categorized that way. I do post a number of different blogs --3 of my own own and a few that I don't own. 

Ariella, much like record players, typewriters are coming back as the quirky things for young people to own. We are forever nostalgic for eras we never lived through! If only I had more space in my studio apartment, I would acquire one of each.

(PS, I saw your Facebook status earlier, and being the Narcissist that I am, I thought, "God I hope I wasn't the person who made the dumb comment!")

@Nicole You may get a kick out of the fact that typewriters are still made available at a library in San Francisco, though the number of machines has dwindled. Last year the NYT ran a piece on the romance of the manual typewriter: Click, Clack, Ding! Sigh ...

Manual typewriters aren't going gently into the good night of the digital era. The machines have been attracting fresh converts, many too young to be nostalgic for spooled ribbons, ink-smudged fingers and corrective fluid. And unlike the typists of yore, these folks aren't clacking away in solitude.

They're fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called "type-ins," they've been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest.

Ooh, I typed on one of those the other day at "Sleep No More" (the interactive theater experience I talk about from time to time). It was difficult. But I want one! I support kids having that, but not Facebook accounts.

Thanks for sharing that great quote, Ariella. Yes, that's exactly what I fear. I understand this is the new world, and social media is part of our lives, as is texting and other means of communication that don't involve being face to face. But I don't think any good can come from introducing that crutch to young kids who will then inevitably grow up without nearly as much face to face communication as previous generations had. I think that they'll suffer the consequences and become less capable of compassion, empathy, and comfortable social interactions. The minimum age of 13 is young enough for Facebook (it should even be older). Reducing that and making it even easier for kids to get on there makes absolutely no sense.

Er, yes, Kim, I do. And the IBM Selectric, now a museum piece.