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Social Media and the Age Old Question

Guest post by: Rob Lawson

Article Overview: The phenomenon of social media is taking the global internet world by storm. But who is exactly using social media, you may wonder. An increasing number of users of all ages are using social media for a number of reasons. With the rapid growth amongst older users, the majority of Facebook users in the United States are now over 25. Read on ...

Social Media and the Age Old Question

The phenomenon of social media has taken the global internet world by storm. In fact, you could even replace the ‘social' in social media as ‘corporate' at times as more and more businesses take advantage of the increasing popularity and wide demographic usage of Facebook, myspace, Twitter, and the rest. And it's not just the corporate world that is increasing social media's popularity - an increasing number of users of all ages are using social media for a number of reasons. Yet some of us still remain adamant that all that poking and tagging is just for bored university students and self-obsessed celebrities tweeting about what they had for breakfast. Sound like your opinion? Well, you're in for a surprise. With the rapid growth amongst older users, the majority of Facebook users in the United States are now over 25. Sure, there are six million users that are aged 13-17, and the whopping 19.5 million aged from 18-25, but there are also 13.4 million aged 26-34, and get ready for it - 9.7 million aged 35-44, 4.6 million aged 45-54, and the most ‘surprising' figure of 2.8 million over 55 years. Put simply, there are more Facebook users aged from 26-44 than 18-25 today. And that 7.4 million of over-45ers have certainly got quite a rapidly growing group of their own.

Older, wiser, and twittering more

Twitter, in all of its self-promoting glory, is most decidedly not for the younger generations. Although presumably aimed at teenagers initially, a much older demographic was the reason for its increasing usage and its now ongoing time in the social media spotlight.

Twitter is the reason that social network developers are sitting up and realizing that teenagers are not necessarily the driving force behind social media sites - older users are not only jumping on the bandwagon; they're pushing it. In fact, only 11% of Twitter users are aged 12-17 years. Some believe this is because it is the older demographics that wish to interact with a broader audience - teens' lives revolve mainly around their friends, whereas the older we get, the more we want to interact with a broader scope of people.

Who's running the businesses?

The reason for this surprising shift in social media usage may have a lot to do with the business side of things. More and more business organizations are taking to social networking sites and applications to advertise, build relationships, and liaise (for more on this, see here - link to ‘social media for business' news article) And we can assume those businesses are not being run by 15 year olds. The beauty of social media for businesses is that you can connect on a personal note with current and potential customers. A recent 2009 study showed that the most common thing businesses are using social media for is ‘engaging consumers in online conversation'. So you can see that marketing -savvy businesses are probably making up some of those ‘older users' figures we're talking about.

So we've got the facts - it's the more mature of us that are getting the most use out of social media. Perhaps it's simply that those 18 year old college students that were first using Facebook have grown up and are keeping with their social networking habits. Or perhaps that old fashioned mindset of the older you are, the less technology-minded, is something to be thrown out with the dog. So if your main market is older than teens, don't think that social media isn't the way to connect with them. It obviously is. What are you waiting for? Jump on that social networking band wagon - or better yet, get pushing!

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Article Tags: online marketing, social media, social media user age, social media users



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