Mele’s Musings

Older Americans’ web use is starting to mirror that of younger consumers

We should be less and less surprised by these headlines now that many online consumers have been online for some time now.

Picture: threeminds.organic.com

Article excerpt:  The online behavior of Americans 50 years and older increasingly is mirroring the online behavior of younger Americans, including similar online shopping habits, according to a study from The Center for the Digital Future in conjunction with AARP, an organization for those 50 and over.  The study found that 68% of users 50 years and older sometimes or often browse in retail stores and then buy online, compared to 72% of users under 50. 76% of older Americans said the Internet is an important or very important source of information, compared with 85% of users under the age of 20. The percentage of those over 50 who see the Internet as an important source of information increased 51% between 2002 and 2007.
The rest: internetretailer.com

Musing:  Now that I am getting older, I guess I don’t see 50 as all THAT old, but regardless, it seems to me less about the fact that older users are changing than it is that users who have been using the web for a while now are just getting older.  Some interesting stats in the article regarding usage – that older users are highly committed to their networks and social activities.  What is also interesting is that older users tend not to use applications like IM.  This, too, seems to mirror the fact that most older users likely a) started with email and it is still the killer app for them and b) they probably use the web a lot for business transactions.  Regardless, the bottom line is that we have stop thinking about the web as the media for the “young folk.”  It’s gone far beyond that.