How moms won the Internet -- and what that means for the rest of us

[Commentary] Why, exactly, are our mothers propagating this omg-you-won’t-believe-it drivel about dogs and public proposals and babies? Half of it is showing up, it would seem: According to eMarketer, there are just a lot of women older than 45 on Facebook. The site skews female anyway, and the general greying of Facebook’s user base means that a third of all users are now well into middle-age. On top of that, there seems to be something unique about how women, and particularly mothers, use Facebook -- something rooted in the fundamental, gendered communication styles we’re taught since birth.

Studies -- and, perhaps, your own listless scrolling through other people’s baby pictures -- suggest that ladies rely on the network to support relationships in a way that men simply don’t. They have more friends than men do, and they comment far more on their friends’ posts. Given all that, it kind of makes sense that moms are both “more clicky” and more eager to share, in the words of Viral Nova CEO Sean Beckner: To them, Facebook represents a highly intimate social club, a place to share pictures of your kids and requests for health advice and that video of a puppy sleeping with a baby that almost made you cry.