Number of social media users aged 65 and up triples

When we talk about a user of a social networking site, how do you picture him or her? A teenager or a twenty-something professional using the site to stay in touch with family and friends, and maybe share some memes, right? This could come as a bit of a shocker, but Facebook and Twitter have a thriving population of senior citizens too.

A Pew Research Center report has revealed that senior citizens, aged 65-years and older, have tripled their presence on social networking sites from 13 percent in the spring of 2009 to a whopping 43 percent now. Six out of ten Internet users between the ages of 50 and 64 are on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, shows the study.

A lot more users above the age of 65-years are now on social networking websites (Image credit: Getty Images)

Facebook, of course, wears the crown for being the website where most seniors frequent. This is pretty understandable since the website helps you stay in touch with all the latest going around within your family and friends circle. Seniors could probably be using Facebook to see what’s going on with their children and grandchildren, family friends, distant relatives as well as friends from their own age groups who’ve also adopted the site. Twitter too has picked up, but only slightly so, with the seniors. While four percent of users aged 65-years and up ended up using Twitter in 2010, five percent of them use Twitter now.

The research found that 72 percent of online adults used some type of social network or the other. This is a massive leap from 2005 where only eight percent adults did so. Unsurprisingly, young adults have yet again turned out to be the most likely social media users. So when you assume someone in their teens or twenties when we say “social media user", you’re probably right in doing so.