Older people know more people...duh (Score 1)

The thing is, there are all sorts of reasons why someone might admit someone they don't know - even a frog - to their circle of "friends" and it's also fairly obvious why older people have more "friends".

To take the second first: older people have been alive longer. They've met more people: at work, in clubs, etc. People from various layers of their pasts find them. There are people in my Facebook friends list who probably never will be sufficiently interested to speak to me again - but who are nonetheless curious what's become of me (or I of them) in the 30 years since we last met. The cliques 'n' crap from high school eventually give way to a sort of neutral curiosity.

To the first point: admitting a frog to your friends list doesn't necessarily mean you're being trusting. It may mean you don't post stuff to Facebook that you wouldn't want to be public. It may mean that rather than vet people closely you're using Facebook more like LinkedIn - as a way to build a network of contacts. Or it may mean that the only reason you use FB is so that people won't bug you about why you're not using FB and you don't GAF because you never post anything anyway.

wg