I recently had a discussion with a client in which he said he wanted to avoid Facebook ads in favor of targeting seniors. He looked at me with dismay as I explained that the percentage of older Americans using Facebook was exploding.
Well, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new study today that backs me up.
In summary, this report, Older Adults and Social Media, finds:
- Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled—from 22% to 42% over the past year.
- Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.
- One in ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one in twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.
- Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.
The important thing to realize is that email remains king with this older demographic. Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day.
What this means is that a balanced communications program is vital to reaching older Americans — one that relies on email as a foundation, but doesn’t ignore social networking sites.
The amount of older adults on these sites has absolutely exploded during the past 12 months — and will no doubt continue to do so in the months and weeks to come. Are you tailoring your communications plan to reach this demographic?