Social Media – Not Just For Kids

There is a great post on how Imedia Connection on how mothers are becoming more and more engaged and involved in social networks. It would appear, according to a recently released industry study, that year over year growth of women ages 25 to 54 with children in the household has gone up nearly 50% on Facebook since 2007. This post is worth reading. It has some very interesting stats and facts, such as: according to a recent MySpace study, the average MySpace mom spends more than 12 hours a week on the site. — That’s a lot of time!

One of the important points to note about social media is that it’s not just for teenagers anymore. I am reading Don Tapscott’s book Grown Up Digital right now and he calls them “screenagers,” which is a great description. However, it’s not just kids that are online. There is a wide range of individuals that are online and you can’t generalize or group them by age anymore. When we deliver our workshops to the senior team or the board of directors of an organization, we are always pleasantly surprised when at least one of the group tells us that they are really active online. Perhaps they are a gamer or they are immersed in communicating on Twitter or that they upload several videos a week to YouTube – and it’s never who you think it is. Times have changed and our perception of who is embracing social media needs to expand.

The Canadian Internet Project released a study last year that showed us that an older demographic is using social media in a variety of ways. I am active on Twitter, the microblogging site. While the people I am following tend to be involved in communications, social media or other areas that I am interested in, the demographic there is much older than you would expect.

A new report was issued by Nielsen – Social Networking’s Global Footprint. One of the interesting points in this report (and there are many) is Facebook’s jump in numbers of people aged 35-49 years of age (+24.1 million). According to the report, from December 2007 through December 2008, Facebook added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million). Pretty interesting stuff!

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