Woman, 104, lies about her age because Facebook won't let her tell the truth

Facebook has more than a billion users worldwide, but it still hasn't figured out how to let centenarian members accurately enter their birthdays.

Take, for example, Marguerite Joseph from Gross Pointe Shores, Mich., near Detroit. Joseph is 104 years old and has been on Facebook for more than two years.

"Every time I tried to change the settings to the right year, Facebook always came back with an unknown error message and would send us right back to a year she wasn’t born in," her granddaughter, Gail Marlow, who helps the legally blind Joseph read and respond to her messages on the social network, told WDIV.

"I would love to see her real age on Facebook, I mean in April she’s going to be 105," Marlow said. "It’s special."

Facebook lists Joseph's age as 99.

She has 198 friends and has posted 23 pictures, not bad for someone who probably doesn't have a solid grasp on the concept of social media.

“She gets that we’re on the internet, she gets that we’re talking to relatives does she understand social media? Probably not," Marlow said.

For its part, Facebook issued a statement after Joseph's story started to get attention:

"We've recently discovered an issue whereby some Facebook users may be unable to enter a birthday before 1910. We are working on a fix for this and we apologize for the inconvenience."

(It does, however seem to allow fan pages to list founding dates beyond 100 years. UPI's Facebook page accurately lists our founding date as July 15, 1907.)