Old fogies catching up on social networking, online video

“Kids” these days may still lead the pack when it comes to new online activities, but older users are catching up quickly. A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that people 34 and older are more and more likely to watch online video, use online classifieds, and even use social networking sites—with the over-74 crowd making the biggest gains.

“Millennials”—those between 18 and 33—are still more likely overall to participate in these newer trends, though the “Gen X” group—those between 34 and 45—are more likely than Millennials to visit government sites or get financial information. Activities like buying products online, online banking, getting news, and (strangely) downloading podcasts have essentially become “uniformly popular” among all age groups, according to Pew.

All age groups saw a pretty significant increase when it came to social networking use during the period between December of 2008 and May of 2010. But the older groups definitely gained the most. For example, usage by the group named “Older Boomers” (those between 55 and 64) jumped from 9 to 43 percent during that period of time. Even the “GI Generation,” those over 74, quadrupled its social networking numbers, going from 4 to 16 percent.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly common for our parents and grandparents to show up on Facebook.

The changes in people watching online video and streaming music showed similar trends, with older users showing bigger gains than younger ones. The one thing that Millennials and the GI Generation have in common, however, is that they both showed declines in blogging between 2008 and 2010. Everyone in between—users 34 to 73—worked on their blogs even harder during that time, but the youngest and oldest users are collectively over it.

Don’t go thinking that self-centered musings about one’s own life will disappear from the Internet anytime soon, though. “[W]hile the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, Internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter,” reads the report.