The 102 year old Facebook frisbee queen

Davey Winder
Friday, 15 August 2008 15:10

Business IT - Networking

Ivy Bean is a gold medal winning frisbee thrower at the age of 102. She also happens to hold another title: the oldest Facebooker in town...

Most people wrongly assume that social networking is for teens and twenty-somethings only. Sure, that is a demographic that makes a lot of use of any trendy method of communicating between peer groups.

However, silver surfers have tons of time on their hands, increasingly they are better off and, crucially, better able to get to grips with Internet technology as computers become both more affordable and more straight-forward to use.

However, Facebook has always been something of an exception. Yes, it is dead simple to use, and yes it does attract a wide range of ages and cultures these days. But it has roots in the strictly student world.

That is where it was born.

That is where it made the mark that allowed it to expand out of the university confines and into the wider world.

That is where it remains in the hearts and minds of many.

Ivy Bean is not one of them.

Ivy Bean is 102 years young.

Ivy Bean recently won a gold medal in the Over-75 Olympics, beating her nearest rival in terms of age by a stonking 27 years. What event, you may ask: frisbee throwing!

Ivy Bean is also the oldest Facebooker in town it would seem. She might only have 9 Facebook friends, but she is hopeful for more. Something that I have a funny feeling will come to be as word of her virtual existence spreads across the Internet.

Born in 1905, Ivy became interested in Facebook after hearing carers at the old folks home where she lives talking about it.

To put her age into some perspective here, Ivy had to wait seven years after her birth before a national telephone network was a reality in Britain, and 46 years before the first computer appeared above the parapet.

The 97 year old French man who previously held the Facebook age title has yet to comment, but we imagine he is grumbling into his onion soup about it...