Making time to keep up

We've only scratched the surface of the big three social networking site for boomers, and there are plenty more out there to explore. All of them have a learning curve, and an investment on your part, dictated by how involved you want to get. And bottom line, they can all become tremendous time-waster , if you let them. But they don't have to be. "I recommend that, for people starting out [with social media], that they divide their time and look at social media in two categories," Latham said. "One category is exploration. That's the time you spend playing, learning and figuring out what's going on. This is separate from the time you spend using these sites." She said individuals need to "devise a plan as to how this works for you and how much time you want to spend on it [per day, week or month]." "You can be very specific this is my plan for using social media: it's a half-hour a day, or Friday mornings," she said. "Always being online isn't something you want to fall into."