Boomers and Social Networking: Never Ever, Ever? Ever?

Social networking is popular with young online users (as our favorite youth writer, Sarah Burris, always explains). But, hey, Baby Boomers account for over 78 million people in the U.S.! What about those of us (like Barack Obama) that are between the ages of 44 and 62? What about the Boomers?

According to a ThirdAge/JWT Boom study, the majority of Boomers haven't yet embraced social networking (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) despite being heavy users of other online services. That study showed 53% of those surveyed had not visited social networking sites, 47% cited concerns over privacy and having personal information on the web, 39% said they are too busy, and 32% do not see the benefit of spending time social networking. According to another survey done by The NPD Group, 61% of Baby Boomer Internet users had indeed visited sites that offer streaming or downloadable video (e.g., YouTube), but only 41% had ever visited social networks (e.g., Linked-In, Facebook, and MySpace).

Though my peers may be slow to adopt these new technologies, the surveys also show that social networking is no longer the exclusive domain of young people. Things are changing. Boomers are catching the social networking bug, albeit cautiously. It seems that more Boomers are joining networks once they take some time to figure out how to do it safely, with protection (yes, J.F., there are privacy protections!). To observe the situation firsthand, every so often, I send out a Facebook invitation to Boomers I know, and...

I find that more and more of them do, after all, take the social networking plunge.

Still, I'll agree that it does seem that e-mails, videos and IM are slightly more popular than social networking sites among those born between 1946 and 1964.

Case in point - my semi-wired friend that responded to my Facebook generated e-mail with the e-mailed video message above!

Don't worry; she'll come around to Facebook. I know she used the word "never." Never mind that tiny little detail! Some Boomers are just hard-headed, that's all. (I'll keep you posted on her progress.) It was definitely very cool that she used a webcam on her laptop to send an e-mailed video message in order to make her point known about not wanting to join Facebook. That, in and of itself, is progress!

Anyway, me thinks she doth protest too much. Don't you?

By the way, no matter your age, if you are on Facebook, we all welcome you to be a fan of EverydayCitizen here and also to join our EverydayCitizen group here. As of today, our Facebook group has 235 members! Most of them are young people, but some are not so young. Come see us and check it out yourself!

Before I go, allow me to share a few more numbers with you. This site that you are on right now - Everyday Citizen - is a pretty popular site. Each month, our traffic numbers steadily grow. Here are our most recent traffic stats:

Average visits per hour = 1,213 visits per hour
Average visits per day = 29,133 visits per day
Average visits per week = 203,931 visits per week
Average visits per month = 876,903 visits per month

Not all of those 876,903 monthly visits to EverydayCitizen.com are people under 44! I think our site attracts networked readers of all ages, although, I think our Sarah would be right if she guessed most of our visitors are Gen X or Gen Y'ers!

Still, with close to 1 million visits per month coming to this site, I'm hoping that more Boomers are joining the fray here at EverydayCitizen.com, too.

See you on Facebook...?