When I was a sophomore in high school, my mother registered her own Xanga account. Remember Xanga? It might as well be a rotary phone now, but six years ago it was the big thing. I'm not sure what compelled her to get a Xanga account, but I remember being mortified that she had one and was especially careful about what I posted online.
There's generally kind of a 'creeper' vibe when people above our age demographic have their own social networking sites. Yet at the same time, I remember rolling my eyes when my parents didn't know what Facebook or Twitter were. We're operating on a double standard: Adults who use social networking sites are weird, but adults who don't know such sites exist are dinosaurs.
A recent Pew study found that 19% of adults ages 45-54 have a social networking profile of some kind. I guess it helps to remember that adults have friends, too, and what works for us would logically work for them. The Pew study concluded that 97% of Facebook users cited friendly communication as their primary purpose for joining the site. As such, I think it's important for us as journalists to remember that older people use these sites for the same reason we do. It shouldn't keep us from doing anything that we might otherwise do, multimedia-wise, for our own demographic. Remember that these people do use social networking sites, and we can't overlook that when trying to reach them.
There's generally kind of a 'creeper' vibe when people above our age demographic have their own social networking sites. Yet at the same time, I remember rolling my eyes when my parents didn't know what Facebook or Twitter were. We're operating on a double standard: Adults who use social networking sites are weird, but adults who don't know such sites exist are dinosaurs.
A recent Pew study found that 19% of adults ages 45-54 have a social networking profile of some kind. I guess it helps to remember that adults have friends, too, and what works for us would logically work for them. The Pew study concluded that 97% of Facebook users cited friendly communication as their primary purpose for joining the site. As such, I think it's important for us as journalists to remember that older people use these sites for the same reason we do. It shouldn't keep us from doing anything that we might otherwise do, multimedia-wise, for our own demographic. Remember that these people do use social networking sites, and we can't overlook that when trying to reach them.
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