A recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project documented the rapidly increasing participation rates of older adults in social media such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as a range of other online activities.
Much of the information from the study is captured very nicely in the chart of online activity be age group:
(Pew Internet and American Life Project, Generations Online in 2009, Sydney Jones and Susannah Fox, January 28, 2009)
As a quick aside from the significance of the data presented here, this chart does a very nice job of communicating the degrees of penetration that various forms of online activity have made among the generations, from Gen Y to the G.I. Generation.
The most immediately interesting finding for us is that 20% of the younger Boomer generation are active on social networking sites. We have been looking at the usefulness of gathering research data from these online communities and remain concerned about our ability to draw reasonably representative samples, even when weighting based on age, etc.
Other interesting findings:
- No more than 3% of Gen Ys and Gen Xs visit virtual worlds (but 10% of teens do).
- Gen Xers are extensive users of the Internet for utilitarian activities (e.g., banking, shopping, researching).
- Despite the explosion of blogs and blogging content, only 11% of adults have created a blog.
- More of the Silent Generation (64 - 72 yrs) have visited government sites than Gen Yers (18 - 32 yrs).
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