Seniors are the fastest growing social media adopters, and teens are helping them do it
In an unexpected twist, it turns out that seniors are the fastest growing group of social media users on the web… but we already knew that! And teens are the ones helping them get online.
According to The Pew Research Center report:
- 6 out of 10 American seniors 65+ use the internet
- 5 out of 10 use social media websites
- 71 per cent use the internet every single day
Reasons for internet usage amongst those surveyed included a desire for community and to use the internet to shop online.
Unfortunately, some seniors are still finding internet usage difficult, with 66 per cent seniors who are offline stating that they would need help to get online and 56 per cent of connected seniors claiming they still need help with social networking sites, such as Facebook.
That’s where Cyber-Seniors has come in. In 2009, sisters Macaulee and Kascha Cassaday helped their grandparents learn to use email, Facebook, and Skype. Finding that to be successful, they created a teaching manual and, with the aid of their friends, began teaching seniors at a local retirement home.
Now, what was once a high school project is a thriving online community that pairs hundreds of teens with seniors in order to teach them to utilise the technology that they might otherwise find daunting.
The more the merrier, we say!
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