Social Media is an incredible thing that we deal with in our lives today. Not to often do you see people reading newsprint, talking on the telephone or meeting face to face. Instead, more and more people, especially the older crowd, are now realizing that this is the new trend and if they do not get on board like the rest of us, they will soon be left in the dark. As year's pass, it is becoming more visual to all of us that social media is not just something we should use, it's something we need to use because without it, no one would know what everyone is doing every minute of the day.
After looking at both reports, some things defiantly caught my eye. For example, in the Pew Interest study, it showed that people fifty and over were starting to increase their online usage and coming close to the ages of those who are 18-29. What also surprised me a lot would have to be the fact that women have more online usage than men. Being a college student I can safely say I've had my share of internet usage and seen many of my classmates, who were mostly male, searching their fantasy football teams or checking out the latest party pictures over the weekend. Girls on the other hand, are all about the online shopping and seeing who just got the new boyfriend or girlfriend on Facebook, which is typical to see on an everyday basis.
On the other hand, there were also things that I discovered that weren't all to shocking to me. For example, seven out of ten seniors now own a cell phone compared to two years ago, which went up 57%! I can remember the days of having grandparents calling my house wishing me a happy birthday and asking how things were going. Now I don't even have a house phone because of how much less use it was getting, and instead getting calls from my grandparents asking about fantasy football points and how to setup new Facebook accounts! Also, another part of the report that didn't have much surprise on me was that 95% of teens 12-17 are now online. One thing that has defiantly shown is that family is starting to creep onto the social media sites. My cousin who has just turned 13 friend-ed me on Facebook and started messaging me about school and how sports are going. Back in my day being 13, all I can remember thinking about was AIM and looking through everyone's profiles to see who was dating who. None the less being 20 years old now, none of this is to shocking because I'm part of the technological generation and I understand that everyone and everything are moving at a rapid pace and the older crowd especially, are just trying to catch up.
Overall, the statistics in these reports are all what I thought to be true. Seeing everything change so fast means that everyone else has to change with it, even if it's not all at the same time. The Pew Interest studies show true that the people with the lowest incomes and the youngest ages are the ones with the most online usage. This is true because at such a young age, everyone communicates through here and much of their shopping is located by surfing the web. I've seen social media grow over the years and most of these statistics are very true to what they say. However, it will be interesting to see what these studies will compare to when they redo it in a couple of years.
Finally, the one thing I can say is that older people are the best to teach and talk about social media with. As said before about my grandparents, having to help them set up Facebook accounts and Twitter's is always a fun deal. On the other hand, it's also strange because I often wonder how times got to to be like this and where it will be heading when I get to be their age. Hopefully, the pace of technology doesn't speed up because at this rate, it'll make my Facebook account look like my middle school MySpace page.
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