Kids started groaning years ago when they found that their parents — OMG! — had invaded their Facebook space.
Now it’s worse: Grandma is out there in FB cyberspace.
Here’s a portion of a story from The Washington Post about the big uptick in seniors using Facebook:
New data from the Pew Center for Internet and American Life released
Monday show that Facebook’s strongest growth over the past year has come
from users over the age of 65, as more older users sign onto the site
to keep in touch with their friends, children and grandchildren.
The survey found that 45 percent of American seniors who use the Internet are on Facebook, up from 35 percent the previous year.
Use among teens, however, has stagnated at 84 percent. That’s in keeping
with growing concern that Facebook is seeing lower engagement with the
younger users that drove its early popularity, something that the
company has acknowledged itself in an earnings call this year.
Facebook may be a victim of its own success after nearly ten years as
the country’s leading social network, said Pew senior researcher Aaron
Smith.
“It’s hard to get more than 85 percent of anyone doing anything,” he
said. “A lot of the easy converts in the younger group, or even in the
older and middle-aged group, are already on the site. The senior group
is the only area that has any substantial area for growth.”
Facebook is seeing an uptick in teen use on Instagram, which it bought
for $1 billion in 2012, indicating that it’s far from being down for the
count.
Still, a stagnating teen audience — the percentage of those in the 18-29
age group that use the site fell two percentage points compared with
last year — fits in with a recent study from researchers at University
College London, which found some British teens at are leaving Facebook
because of the influx of older users.
An ethnographic study of 16-18 year olds north of London found teens are
opting to use private messaging services such as WhatsApp and Snapchat
to communicate with their friends. In many cases, the study said, teens
stay on Facebook at the behest of their parents, who have made it a tool
for keeping track of their children.
