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Marilyn Mann of Kensington uses Facebook much the way most teens do: keeping in touch with her high school classmates, checking out blogs, posting links to sites she likes. But you don't have to look far past Joni Mitchell and The Band listed in her profile's music preferences to see that she's not still roaming the halls. Hers is the class of 1973.

Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are increasingly intersecting with their Generation Y counterparts in the online social networking scene, connecting with old high school friends, coworkers and even their own children on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Mann, 53, says it's a great way to keep in touch with old friends; the 35th reunion of her class is being organized through the site. But her 15-year-old daughter, she said, thinks her involvement on the formerly parent-free stomping grounds of teens and coeds is "totally bizarre."

"She doesn't mind my being on it, but if she actually sees me spending time on it she thinks it's like, weird," Mann said. "The other day she said, ‘You're an adult. You're not supposed to like Facebook that much.'"

Mann and her daughter keep their distance on the site out of a mutual respect for boundaries, she said, but like many other adults of her season, she is embracing the technology.

The sites work like virtual communities, allowing users to build online profiles with pictures, descriptions and information about themselves and their lives, then "friend" the profiles of other people to view them.

According to Facebook, its fastest-growing demographic is people 25 years and older. A recent report by "Inside Facebook" cited by Facebook representatives said active users have grown from 130 million monthly to 140 million monthly just since the beginning of December, a rate of 600,000 per day.

Ken Goldsmith, a 41-year-old from Kensington described the networks as "a living library."

"Instead of checking out books, you're checking out people," Goldsmith said.

To some, he said, the idea of putting one's personal life on the Internet and rifling through others' smacks of voyeurism. But just as the Boomers' own sexual revolution challenged conventions of relationships, social networks are simply the latest redefinition of intimacy, allowing for connections to be made in an increasingly fast-paced world.

"This is saying, ‘No. It's hard enough to meet people. We're in a very transient society, nobody stays in a job for life anymore,'" Goldsmith said. "The old conventions don't work."

Goldsmith, who has profiles on Facebook, MySpace and other networking sites, said the technology can establish relationships but it's up to users to grow them. He uses networking sites frequently for his job as a lobbyist for the American Bar Association, finding experts through the "self-selected groups" they join when he needs to learn more about certain issues.

"I'll have a question around veteran's affairs, I'll find someone in a veteran's group, I'll ask them a question, they'll answer it and then I'll add them to my network too," Goldsmith said.

True to his Boomer roots, Takoma Park's Jordan Barab, 53, said his involvement in the site is "mostly political." Barab, a congressional staffer who focuses on labor, occupational health and safety issues, first joined Facebook in support of an acquaintance that was being censured by the site for activism involving unions. Barab now uses it to keep up with the blogging community, make announcements, post articles to his page and keep in touch with people of a similar political shade.

He's used it to talk to friends and family of course, but Barab said "If it wasn't for the political stuff and posting the articles that I link to, I don't think I would use it as much."

Ron Gross, 40, of North Bethesda joined Facebook at the urging of several friends, and while he doesn't constantly update his status, a feature that allows users to tell their online friends what they are doing, he said he finds the site "interesting."

"I reconnected with people I haven't thought about in 20 years," Gross said. "Sometimes you get shocked about what people are doing, how many marriages they've had, you know?"

For those uncomfortable with airing all laundry online, Gross pointed out privacy settings can be adjusted to levels such that only friends can see.

"It's just an easy way to communicate, coworkers are on it, touching base with other people," Gross said, saying lots of his real life friends his age also use networking sites. "I know a bunch of people, a lot in my community, in my neighborhood, my coworkers."