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.
