Facebook has seen a surge of 513% of Senior Citizens and over 55′s joining in the USA. Australia too has a massive increase in seniors in Facebook and social networks generally in the last year or two. I want to offer some links for the statistics I quoted for an article in The Age and another one in the Sydney Morning Herald on the phenomenon:
Computer users aged 55 and over are the fastest growing group to sign up to sites such as Facebook and MySpace, often using them to keep up to date with the lives of family and friends, especially grandchildren interstate and overseas – assuming they aren’t among the growing number of younger users abandoning the social networking sites.
Figures show that the number of older users of Facebook increased nearly tenfold in America last year, while university-age users declined by 55 per cent.
Australian figures show that about one in five over the age of 55 is connecting through Facebook, with 550,000 logging in. Facebook claims to have more than 7 million users.
Social network strategist Laurel Papworth said Australia’s take-up rate was generally about 2 to 3 per cent higher than the US for computer use.
(The SMH article has similar stuff but different people e.g. Council of Aging). Warning – collection of statistics and graphs and maths coming up! Continue reading »
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