A Majority Of Older Americans Are Now On The Internet

Maybe it's because I am a Baby Boomer myself, but I found these figures on internet use by older Americans fairly interesting. It seems that you can teach an old dog new tricks, because a significant majority of Americans over 65 years-old (59%) now use the internet (and 71% of those using the internet do so daily). That's pretty good for a group of people who were well into their adult years before home computers were even available to the public.

But while a majority of those seniors are online (using e-mail and searching the internet), only about a quarter of those over 65 use social network sites (Google+, Facebook, etc.), while about 90% of younger Americans do so.

I also found it interesting that there are three factors that influence whether a senior will use the internet or not. Note that those who are the youngest seniors, those with the most education, and those with the highest incomes, have the highest rate of internet use -- while the opposite is true of the oldest seniors, the least educated, and those with the lowest incomes.

These figures come from a Pew Research Center survey done between July 18th and September 30th of 2013. The survey questioned 1,526 people over 65, and has a margin of error of 2.9 points.