At 102, Ivy Bean has become the world’s oldest person on the social networking site. The New York Post’s “Weird but True” column published the news item, snarkily citing it as further proof “that Facebook has grown utterly uncool.” Gee, thousands of Facebook members disagree. Bean has gotten thousands of friend requests and hundreds of wall posts, of which Sweden’s Fredrika Töntqvist’s is typical: “Hi Ivy, it’s never too late to become famous 🙂 I Wish everyone was so cool as you, even after their 100th birthday!.”
“I love being online,” Bean told a British newspaper, “and it beats writing with a pen.” The former mill worker lives in Bradford, England. She heard about Facebook from caregivers at her nursing home, where she moved at 101 when her previous home closed down. The most recent video on her Facebook page shows the centenarian handily winning the Frisbee toss in Bradford’s Over-75 Olympics.