Internet & Social Media Use Statistics

These articles are very interesting to read and have a lot of surprising and thought-provoking statistics that caught my attention. The most shocking statistic in these three reports is how half of American adults over the age of 65 use the Internet as a daily part of their lives. Although I have known that the Internet has become more popular in different age groups I did not know the Internet played that significant of a role in older generations.

There are a lot of interesting facts throughout these three articles but there were several statistics that were extremely eye catching. It was really shocking to read that 70% of adults over the age of 65 use the Internet on a typical day. I thought this was extremely interesting because even though I know older generations use the Internet I did not think it was a daily activity. It also is not that much lower of a percentage than younger generations who use the Internet on a daily basis. Another interesting fact that I read was how many people over the age of 65 owned different types of technology gadgets. “Seven in ten seniors own a cell phone, up from 57% two years ago” (Zickuhr & Madden, 2012). I am really shocked by this statistic also because my grandparents do not own cell phones and never caught on to the rise in technology. An additional interesting fact I read is that “20% of online adults say they use LinkedIn as of August 2012” (Brenner, 2013). I thought the percentage of adults on LinkedIn would be significantly higher than 20%.

A significant amount of my friends parents and grandparents use social media sites but my parents or grandparents have never joined in with the popular trend. There was a substantial difference in how my parents felt when I joined social media websites versus my younger sister. I also noticed that my younger sister joined Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr before I joined so sometimes I feel like I find out about social media trends later than younger generations.

References:

Brenner, Joanna. (August 5, 2013). Pew Internet: Social Networking. Pew Internet.

Zickuhr, Kathryn., & Madden Mary. Other Adults and Internet Use. Pew Internet.