Help, My Mum's on Facebook!

The cry of many a teenager I know but I'm in my late 30s and my mum turned 63 today and celebrated by opening a Facebook account. I know people in thier 60s (and over) are very tech savvy but my mum can't programme the DVD without a support group of at least two of us. I should have been warned - a few weeks ago personal calls were banned at her office and suddenly she kept popping up on YahooChat. This coincided with her friend - the 'Joneses' in our family's 'keeping up with the Joneses' scenario - also joining YahooChat, shortly after she appeared on Facebook. I felt a bit left out actually as she didn't mention her intention to me and the first I knew about it was when she sent a friend request to my husband - I had to search for my own mother! Unlike most teenagers I have nothing to hide - I'm actually looking forward to introducing her to Facebook's many delights - just don't mention Twitter to her ...

On another note I helped out in my son's class at school today and the 5 year olds were learning about the Internet - just last week I signed him up for Lego Magazine (for 4-6 year olds) and was asked for the child's email address! So how old should children be before they are introduced to email and social networking sites (thankfully Facebook is limited to over 16s, though I know a 10 year old relative is on there 'to play games')?