Over on Twitter, I have jokingly made myself the director of the Twitterville Senior Center. We are going to need to expand the facility. eMarketer, publishers of the only email newsletter I still read loyally, has just published numbers that say that the number of seniors online in the US is at 20 million and growing at a rate of 7.6%, compared with the overall grwth rate of 3.1 %.
I would assume this type of growth and adoption is applicable to the remainder of the connected world as well as the US. While eMarketer may be excited because we seniors seem to be an untapped market that can now get hit online for advertising & DM, I am more interested in the social phenomenon that is occurring simply by the passage of time.
I am no digital native. I first started using a PC in 1982 at the age of 37. By 1984, most of my friends my age were using them Just about none of our parents were using them, and when someone our age said he wanted to make software our mothers would use, it became a Holy Grail of not just marketing, but ease of use.
28 years have passed. I am now a couple months shy of my 64th birthday. My generation has, by demographic standards, become senior. This fact has not caused us to push our laptops aside in favor of TV sets, although many if us have discovered a grandchild's smile is more valuable than a TechMeme mention.
What has lagged is the general image of those of us past 60. We are fitter and more current than you may think. We use the internet to inform each other about health and finance and other issues that become more important as we age. I'm sure most of you will do the same if you make to our age.
My point is this: The rise of seniors online is not being caused by old people picking up comoputers late in life. It is being caused by the very natural evolution of young people getting older, a trend that I'm pretty sure will continue.
A great many of us are quite computer lierate and from this point forward it should be no surprise that our numbers will continue to grow.
