104-year-old woman too old for Facebook, had to lie about age

While some ladies have been known to lie about their age, Marguerite Joseph is nothing but proud of her 104 years. Only one problem, Facebook's settings say she is too old and automatically makes her 20 years younger. 

 Joseph loves using Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends. She was four-years-old when the Titanic sank, she lived through several wars and even witnessed the Great Depression. She has seen the introduction of every new method of communication known to mankind, including Facebook. All good stuff for a long-lived and interesting lady who wanted to sign up on Facebook.

 

Joseph has an extensive family, with five children, 12 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, so Facebook is the ideal place to keep in touch with everyone. Only one problem, when she signed up, she was 102-years-old. 

 

When her granddaughter, Gail Marlow, tried to state her actual year of birth, 1908, it kept changing to 1928. Apparently there is a clause regarding age policies on Facebook that implies that people over 99 cannot be registered on the social network.

 

In a status update in January, Joseph wrote, "I'm annoyed by facebook because I can't add my actualy [sic] birth year. When I originally opened my account I could only enter myself as being 99 years old, eventhough [sic] I was 102...now I'm 104 almost 105 and still can't enter in my correct DOB. And I think I'm the oldest facebook member...I've written fb but they don't seem to fix it! Any suggestions???"

 

Marguerite Joseph is legally blind and can’t hear, but her granddaughter reads and responds to all messages the elderly woman gets and generally keeps her up to date. “All of our family members always asked how grandma was doing on my Facebook page,” Gail Marlow said. “So I decided I would set up a page of her own so she could stay connected to her family in Canada.”

 

"Every time I tried to change the settings to the right year, Facebook came back with an unknown error message and would send us right back to a year she wasn’t born in,” Marlow said. “I would love to see her real age on Facebook. I mean, in April she’s going to be 105. It’s special.”

 

Marlow told the local TV station WDIV-TV that she "would love to see" her grandmother’s age displayed, and regretted her own inability to fix "a glitch in the system."

 

Marlow even contacted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but he never responded to her query. Reportedly Facebook is apologizing for the problem with spokesman Andrew Noyes telling AP the company is "trying to deal with the issue."

 

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/343984