Facebook

I was invited to join Facebook to keep in touch with a young friend who relocated to the US. Since then I've linked to family members in the US and around Australia. The language used very much evidences the generation of the user. The youngsters (under 30s) use SMS speak and tend to embellish (I hope!!) their social & sexual drinking/drugging activities. The older generation are more comfortable with grammatic English, even when using the social links to search for social relationships. I feel like a pedant when I try to bridge ths generation gap to make contact with some young relatives. I haven't used Facebook for collegiate links, but was introduced to Twitter to follow professional development discussions re. literacy theories end English teaching.