New Study Released By The Center For The Digital Future and AARP Shows Internet Users 50+ Are Rapidly Closing the Digital Divide with Booming Online ActivityThink about it people, round these parts "the Internet" became popular from the early nineties. The early nineties is now ten to fifteen years ago. People who are now just 50+ were then just 35-40+ is anyone really surprised that they actually use the Internet? I'm now 60+ and I've been publishing content and using "social networking" sites and email groups (a surviving pre-Web 2.0 social networking technology) since the early to mid nineties... Back then I did not feel particularly old to be involved, the surprise would be if few people in the 50-70 age bracket were making significant Internet use.
News Release
June 19, 2008
Mary's response was politer than mine, but she seems equally unimpressed by this totally unsurprising research.
This was a "dog bites man" headline. About as much of a surprise as being told that Winston Peters was economical with the truth!
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I think that it would be interesting to look at *how* these people were using the net. I think that it is unsurprising that people in their 50s and early 60s are using the net, but I suspect that they're using it quite differently to the way that younger people use it, and then differently to the way that people who are older than that use it. I think there are quite a few people in their later 60s and older who have internet access, but they have very different usage patterns. I know quite a few who use email and are reasonably proficient at using Google, but very few blog, or have Facebook (unless they use it to play Scrabble on line with their grandchildren).
Can I also add, Tim, that you are probably not typical of people your age. I have a number of colleagues who are in their early 60s, are university academics who are highly respected in their fields and quite proficient at email and Google, but panic if you suggest that they might use PowerPoint or offer on-line units unless they have a more computer adept colleague helping them. The latter is a little difficult at my university where more than 75% of our students study by distance. :-)
By 
Judy Redman, at
July 21, 2008 10:57 PM
Judy, I agree with much of what you have written.
I expect that patterns of average web use at different ages will differ - but then patterns of phone use differ at different ages and no one headlines people 50+ are actually using PHONES as if it was news ;)
I have colleagues who are decades younger than me who are technophobes but when our principal Brian Smith retired about ten years ago he began to learn to use a computer (!) and swiftly became one of the most stillful online teachers I have seen. The difference is not so much age as other factors of personality and experience.
So, while it is true that "old dogs" learn new tricks more slowly (and old starts quite young for these purposes) and so those who were "old" in the 90s will probably have lower and less adventurous Internet usage than those who were young then that was a decade ago. Are we saying that people in their 40s in 1990 were then "old"! I think there are three generations here:
- born digital (an exageration as I'd include my daughter Sarah who first touched a computer at age 4) who are now about 0-25
- learned as adults who are now between 25 and 75 (plus a few over 75 who were early adopters late in life ;)
- unlikely digiterati those over 75 or who are technophobic.
These age ranges are (of course) only a caricature, those whose jobs require use afre more likely to use, technophiles are more likely and so are the well-off. So a poor, technophobic person who works in a situation that does not require Internet use will be much less likely to use significantly whatever their age.
By Tim, at
July 22, 2008 7:01 AM
