It’s a common practice on Facebook for users to list their ages as 99. That’s even true for kids under 13, who aren’t even allowed on the social network.
But if you are over 109, you may hit a snap. Facebook’s drop-down menu for users’ birthdays begins at 1905.
That is what Anna Stoehr, 114 today, found when she tried to sign up for Facebook, according to
Although the Minnesotan was born in 1900, Stoehr put herself down as 99 after the Facebook registration form blocked her when she tried to say her real age. She has written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for a fix, according to reports.
Perhaps when Facebook originally set up its systems, it wanted to create an upper age limit so that users wouldn’t list what would seem to be absurd ages.
When a Michigan woman, then 104, tried to sign up for Facebook last year, she too was blocked. At the time Facebook said, according to NPR:
Apparently the upper age limit was then adjusted to 1905. But that’s doesn’t include super centenarians like Stoehr.
With Americans living to be older, as the New York Times recently reported, Facebook might have to keep moving that upper age limit.
Above: Photo from Reuters archives
