While you’ve been staring at your smartphone, oblivious to the world around you, your grandparents have gone digital.
For the over 65s, Homes Under the Hammer, Flog It and Murder She Wrote are out – and iPads, smartphones and Facebook are firmly in.
There’s a new name for these digital newbies – the ‘social seniors’. The term was coined by Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, to describe the rampant rise of over 65s online.
Silver surfers > Social seniors
Baby boomers born in the 1950s are more connected than ever – smartphone use has doubled in the past three years, with four in ten now using one.
Spotted your elderly friends and family on social media? Almost 90% of ‘social seniors’ have a Facebook account – so now’s the time to clear out all those pictures from Freshers’ Week.
There’s still a lot more work to be done to get older generations online. Ofcom’s latest research shows over half of over 75s still don’t go online at all, and most of them (86%) have no plans to do so.
Older internet users also struggle with data security, privacy and have limited understanding of sponsored content and fake news.
Stop obsessing over millennials
There’s one clear lesson from today’s report: we need to stop obsessing over ‘millennials’.
As more people join the internet for the first time, the services we use everyday need to be designed with everyone in mind, not just the digitally ‘native’.
Read the Ofcom report in full here.
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