Turn On, Tune In, Link Up: Boomers Are Closing The Digital Divide Online

The Internet has suffered its share of metaphors, from the “information superhighway” and “cyberspace” in the ’90s to “cloud computing” today (that’s the concept of moving computing resources from desktops to data centers accessed online).

But for all the lofty imagery, the Internet has always been a personal matter that, despite its worldwide reach, is defined by how you use it. In that sense, Internet use is like a periscope: When users age 50-plus put theirs up, researchers have found, they’re looking both backward and forward, toward the past and the future.

This decade’s online growth is invalidating the notion of a “digital divide,” or “gray gap”—tech-savvy kids on one side and geezers asking, “How does this thing work?” on the other. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 92 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 use the Internet; 85 percent of those 30 to 49; 72 percent of those 50 to 64; and 37 percent of those 65-plus.

“Our studies have found that boomers are just as enthusiastic about the benefits of e-mail and Web activities as their younger counterparts,” says Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project.

Says Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles, “Just about everybody who wants to be online is online.” There are still some holdouts who “think their lives are just fine without the Internet,” he allows. “That will get harder and harder to continue to do.”

Once people are connected—and about 218 million Americans are—they seldom look back. “I talked to a 93-year-old grandmother who never planned to go near the Internet in her life,” Cole says. “But you send her grandson to Iraq and give her the chance to talk to him twice a day and she’ll go online in an instant. And when she does, she discovers lots of other things.”

In general those are the same practical things attracting her kids and grandkids—researching products, hobbies and medical conditions; getting driving directions; and reading the news. But the generations do gravitate in different directions. The categories of sites that have the highest percentage of users 18 to 24 relate to nightlife, professional wrestling, comics and animation, says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Hitwise USA, which tracks where people go online. Compare that to the top categories for 55-plus, and a different picture emerges: Horseracing (which encompasses everything from race results to handicapping software) is number one, followed by golf, stocks and investments, travel cruises and virtual pharmacies.

You might think that this means older users are more “purpose-driven,” but consider their steady stream of visits to something like StumbleUpon Video, which randomly selects videos available to view online. “I would say there is some time wasting involved,” says Tancer.

But who’s to say what constitutes time wasting? If you can afford to book your next cruise, or pick your next horse, then you can probably take a few moments to sample the Web at StumbleUpon. And while you’re out there, you might just look around for other periscopes seeking the same things. This is how online communities—at so-called social networking sites—are created.

“People are saying, ‘I want to form communities irrespective of distance, I want to be connected,’ ” observes Cole. “That is one of the biggest complaints of growing older, being isolated, and for that the Internet is—and I try not to use this word too much—revolutionary.”

While older users increasingly frequent social networking sites, “they are much less interested in Facebook and MySpace, the hang-out-your-shingle sites, and much more interested in ‘how to be a better chess player,’ or ‘how to deal with the physical or emotional toll of a disease,’ ” says Cole.

Playing bridge, poker or Scrabble. Discussing political philosophy. These activities aren’t necessarily new, Cole notes, but in the past “you might not have had people immediately around you that you could have done that with.” For online activities, partners are always available. And they’re people you can get to know, people with a common bond.

Whatever the pretext, community has a pull that isn’t limited by age. More than 90 percent of users on both sides of 50 say that online community is somewhat to very important, according to Cole’s research. And in an unprecedented response, 100 percent of users 50-plus report benefiting from their online communities. Some users even report checking in with communities before checking their e-mail.

A digital divide is more pronounced in how users share information online, Cole says. Users ages 12 to 24 are “much more likely to trust unknown peers than experts,” he says. An older user is as likely to be suspicious of information found on the Internet as to believe it. He “may play Scrabulous with unknown peers but is less likely to be taking advice from them.” That suspicion extends to concerns about privacy and security online, says Tancer. But while visitors to anti-spyware and virus protection sites skew older, they’re less likely than young people to act to protect themselves against fraud, studies have found.

It’s curiosity, not suspicion, that entices many older users to learn about the past on the Internet. Many are looking way back: 47.8 percent of the visitors to the genealogy site Ancestry.com are 55-plus (according to Hitwise), while Legacy.com (“your nationwide resource for obituaries and guest books”) counts 64 percent of its visitors in that age group. Some are more interested in the recent past. “The 55-plus demo is big in terms of getting back in touch,” says Tancer. Classmates.com gets 34.2 percent of its traffic from people in that demographic, and Reunion.com gets 27.9 percent (the biggest age group for both sites).

Finding someone else (or even fantasizing about it) is a popular activity with all ages. But with connectivity comes the risk of being found—even if you don’t want to be. Getting e-mail from people you have not seen or even thought of in 30 years can be a mixed blessing. The ability to rebuild your life with a clean slate is getting harder, says Cole: “The idea of a frontier—even in the 1960s you could move to California and start over—that’s changing a bit.”

The past is, after all, just a few clicks away—which also means “your great-great-great grandchildren will meet you and your children online,” predicts Cole. “There will be a site dedicated to [your children’s] lives that will contain everything from video of them being born to home movies, report cards, weddings, any extraordinary things they did. All the way up to the funeral.”

Sean Elder is a writer, editor and blogger in Brooklyn, N.Y.