Teenagers are abandoning blogs, while members of the “G.I. Generation” are flocking to Facebook. These are two of the findings in a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which put out a similar “Generations” report last year.
The central finding of this year’s report is highly intuitive: Across the board, Americans are using the Internet more. Email, search engines, health information, news and podcasts, product sites, travel sites, banking sites–all were accessed more, by the old and the young alike.
But it’s in the nuanced parsing of generational information that’s the real meat of the report. One of the major findings of the report is that “millennials,” sometimes called “Generation Y”–aged 18-33–are more likely to use wireless internet, laptop, social networking sites or participate in virtual worlds. But there were some corners of the internet use that older folks, from Gen X on up, were more likely to use: online banking, for instance, or government websites.
A few other intriguing bits from the report:
• the percentage of adults who watch video online jumped from 52% in 2008 to 66% in 2010.
• over half–51%–of adults listen to music online. That figure was just 34% in June 2004.
