WHEN it comes to Facebook, I'm a silent lurker.

I don't post photos or give any profile details.

I'm showing my age. I'm wary and cautious. But I do like to be on there - because that's where my nieces and nephews are and I want to stay connected with them.

They post photos, comments and details I'd never hand out so freely.

For a while we tried a family blog, with exclusive viewing for family members, but for some reason "the kids" (ages 32 to seven) didn't get involved.

Yet on Facebook they post photos of their latest revelries without shame or caution.

Maybe I'm on their limited access list.

I can understand why some of their parents aren't!

In any case, I appreciate being part of their online network.

Some of them are scattered around the world and Facebook offers cheap and easy communication. Of sorts.

Central Victorian Kelly Skinner, 58, is also a big fan of internet communication because it allows her to stay in touch with her daughter Bonny, 28, in New York.

They Skype, or chat online, using internet cameras and built-in microphones for their "real-time" live conversation.

Kelly's impoverished family migrated from the US in the 1960s to seek a better life.

They could not afford a telephone at the time.

"We lost contact with my grandparents," says Kelly.

"In 2005-06 I was teaching Iraqis and they all had mobile phones and some had email contact with their families.

"They weren't torn from their families in the way, say, the boat people of Vietnam were in the 1970s."

Yet not everyone is convinced that online networks such as Facebook and Twitter are all they're cracked up to be.

Associate Professor Barry Golding from the University of Ballarat argues they can be inequitable and downright dangerous.

Barry researches the way human face-to-face networks work. At a public debate in my town this week he offered a few facts, which made me wonder whether online social networks are creating a new form of inequity.

He says that only half of all adults aged over 50 in Australia have access to the internet, either because the other half don't know how to use computers, or can't afford them. A third of young people have no access to computers outside of school, again largely because their families can't afford them.

Furthermore, 80 per cent of the world's population hasn't yet made a phone call, let alone used a computer, because most don't have access to a reliable power source.

Many are still burning cow dung to cook and for heating.

Barry also is concerned about the potential for misuse and abuse through online social networks.

Young people have fallen prey to sexual abuse and stalkers. Internet fraud is common.

The media has taken information from Facebook sites and reported personal details in instances where Facebook users have become the subject of news stories.

Somebody else cited an instance of students constantly posting their opinions online, without really listening to what others have to say, obliterating the "give and take" of a face-to-face conversation.

The inference was that all conversation was on a lemming-like march to the cliff.

Yet others are not worried.

My neighbour reckons us oldies are simply scared of new online technologies and networks in the same way our parents were of the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll era of the 1960s and '70s.

Personally I like my revolutions face to face.