While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled - from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.
See Pew Report online:
Older Adults and Social Media
While young adults are the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, older users over 50 are starting to catch up. According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 47% of Internet users between the ages of 50 and 64 and 25% of online adults over 65 now use social networking sites. Compared to just a year ago, the number of Internet users over 50 in the U.S. who use social networking services has nearly doubled.
Older Adults Love Facebook - Twitter Still Lagging Far Behind
The Pew report also notes that the number of older adults (50-64) who use Twitter or another status update service doubled from about 5% to 11% over the last year. Seniors (65+) are still lagging behind in the use of status update services, but while only about 1% of them used Twitter regularly in 2009, this number has now grown to 6%.
No matter the growing popularity of social networking services among older users, email and online news sites are still far more popular than Facebook and Twitter among this age group. Overall, 92% of all older adults and 89% of all seniors send or read email daily. With regards to online news gathering, 76% of older adults get their news online and 42% say they do so daily. Among seniors, about 62% look for news online and 34% say that they do so daily.
Between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88% - from 25% to 47%.
During the same period, use among those ages 65 and older grew 100% - from 13% to 26%.
By comparison, social networking use among users ages 18-29 grew by 13%—from 76% to 86%.
“Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users,” explains Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and author of the report. “Email is still the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, but many older users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications.”
One in five (20%) online adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago.
Among adults ages 65 and older, 13% log on to social networking sites on a typical day, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.
At the same time, the use of status update services like Twitter has also grown - particularly among those ages 50-64. One in ten internet users ages 50 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.