I never thought in a million years I'd say this, but I use Twitter. Daily. Sometimes hourly.

After several years of saying how stupid the social networking site seemed to me, I'm now a tweeter. Which is kind of like a tweaker, as it is rather addictive, but it costs far less. In fact, being on Twitter pays me -- in the form of new followers and friends. Some of you reading this may have even followed me here from Twitter. (Welcome, SITSGirls!)

Anyway, so I tweet. No big deal.

Apparently it is a big deal to my daughters, though. A laughable big deal.

My daughters don't tweet; they think it's silly (like mother, like daughter, I suppose). They text, they're on Facebook, one even has a blog. But "I'd never tweet on Twitter!" is pretty much the common refrain from all three, incredulous that their mother -- a grandma, even, and someone they thought was intelligent ... on most days -- would actually participate in such drivel.

Funny thing is, my daughters do tweet. All the cussing time! Just not on Twitter. They send me little chirps and shoutouts via 140-character-or-less texts and 140-word-or-less phone calls and voicemails all day long. Which, in my opinion, puts them firmly in the "tweet" category.

The girls call or text to tweet about their trip home from work, the weather, what temperature you preheat the oven to for banana bread and on, and on, and on.

Don't get me wrong; I love their pseudo-tweeting. I truly do. I love that my daughters are comfortable calling and texting any time, any day, any night, for any reason whatsoever, however inane that reason may be.

Here is a small sampling of the pseudo-tweets I've received from my daughters just in the last two days:

"I finally feel like I have friends again!"

"What do I do if the power goes out?"

"Have you accessed my bank account for any reason?"

"Yay! I signed a lease!"

"I've never hated a job as much as I hate this one."

See what I mean? Those are tweet-worthy texts and telephone calls. More like Twitter direct messages, but Twitter talk just the same.

The one serious difference between tweets from my girls and tweets from my Twitter pals? No matter how often they tweet, no matter how often they bug the cuss out of me with the chirping, I can't unfollow the girls. There's definitely no "unfollow" button when it comes to my lovely offspring. And in all honesty, I don't want there to be. (Some folks on Twitter? Well, that's a different story. And I do use the unfollow button.)

Oh, and another big difference: Retweeting certain tweets from the girls is bad. Very, very bad. And may result in a total lockout of the service.

Which means this post will likely get me a big 'ol #mymomdoesntknowwhentokeephermouthshut mention.

If only the girls knew what that means.

And how to do it.

But they don't.

Because they're not on Twitter.

Ha!

Today's question:

Do you find it easier to form new friendships online or in real life? Why?