Face it, Mark Zuckerberg (inventor of Facebook) didn’t create it for folks like us — he created it for a bunch of college kids to hook up with each other.  Yet, baby boomers are flocking to Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites — they even have a few of their own trying to get off the ground.  Use of social networks by baby boomers increased by 88% between 2009 and 2010 to the point where now more than 50% of baby boomers use at least 1 social network, according to a study by eMarketer. Even more surprising is the rise in social network use by the mature population slightly older than the baby boomers — 63-75.  This growth far exceeds the growth in social media use by any other demographic and flies in the face of declining use among Millennials (the youngest gen Xers).

Baby boomers join social networks for the same reasons everyone else does — to keep up with friends and relatives and reconnect with friends from their past.  Increasingly, they’re using social networks like LinkedIn to find new jobs, search for employees, and build professional relationships.  New social networking sites also help baby boomers connect with potential mates — just like early users of Facebook.

For people already on Facebook or another social network, I’ll post some of the intricacies of using these sites without embarrassing your friends and family.  For the other half of you not currently using social networking, here’s your tutorial.

How to Create a Profile on Facebook?

Creating a Facebook profile is really simple.  Just go to Facebook by selecting the link, give them your email address and select a password you can easily remember.   Don’t be confused by all the aspects you can edit about your profile, you can work on them later.

You can fill in information about how you are, where you went to school, etc, but you DON’T have to give them anything else.  You SHOULD go in and set your privacy controls to make sure things are only shared with people you want to share with.  You can share with everyone or select who you want to share things with.  It’s up to you.

You probably want to upload a picture — as your profile picture.  If you have a smart phone, you can take a picture and upload it to directly into Facebook (you may have to set up your phone, but that’s simple, too).  Otherwise load any digital picture of you on your computer and upload it to Facebook or to a service like Flickr.

The Tour of Facebook

The basic set-up for Facebook is a picture in the upper left corner — if you haven’t uploaded a picture you’ll see a silhouette instead.  Beneath the picture are tabs — actually links to different parts of your Facebook site.

You’ll notice you have a wall — this is where you’ll read stuff posted by your “Friends”.  At first you won’t notice much — you’ll have to start inviting friends to join you.  So, all you’ll see for now our your status updates — things you want to share.  If you add someone as a friend, they’ll be able to see anything you post to your updates, even if it’s added before they’re friends with you.

You’ll have a profile where you can look at your profile the way everyone else sees you — and you can edit it here, too.

You’ll see other tabs for photos of you — either ones you uploaded or ones friends uploaded and identified as you — and friends.  Once you start adding friends you’ll see their pictures below the tabs.

Across the top you’ll see pictures.  These are the top 5 pictures of you and you can change them by adding more photos — they’re replace older ones.

Along the right side you’ll see suggestions of people you may know.  If you want, you can add them as a friend but they’ll have to approve you before you’ll start seeing stuff they post.  You’ll also see some ads (annoying, but necessary, I guess).  On the far right is a new strip added last week — this contains stuff that used to be on your wall, but now Facebook considers it useless information.  Accordingly, friends updating their profile picture, liking a post or a brand, accepting someone else’s friend requests, or attending an event are all relegated to the far right, while stuff you’re likely to find more interesting still goes to your wall.