Seniors on the Web - An Interesting Group
from Aaron Goldberg's "Infobeads" on ZDNet
June 25, 1999
Senior citizens are one of the fastest growing groups of new users on the Web.
Not only is this over-60 group going online, they also are quite active once they get
there. Given that, understanding the Web population in the context of who they are, and
not just looking at the fact that they get online, is worth investigating.
One of the first things to notice about Web use in households headed by those
60+ years of age is the ISP/Services they use. The list isn't completely different from
the Web population as a whole, but the difference is significant enough to make things a
bit interesting. For 'seniors', AOL use is quite high, which is not unexpected. Most of
this group did not have the same "growing up with computing" experience that
younger segments have, and therefore the notion that they would use a service more focused
on simple access to tasks and sites, like AOL, is not surprising. Nor is it unforeseen
that small local ISPs would do well here. The big news is MSN and local Telcos do well.
This is probably the best showing I've seen for either option, and a testament that brand
name matters in this segment, perhaps more than in the other populations.
Source: Technology User Profile
Looking at what applications this group uses, there are some important
differences from the other groups. First off, while we all believed that seniors would be
avid emailers, it does not look like they have the same broad use of email as other
audiences. This is a bit counter-intuitive and might well be a manifestation of the
"shop and search" usage pattern that appears quite strong here. While they do
some software downloading and online publications' reading, the shopping activities rank
quite high here, yet the majority of 60+ households do still not do them. In fact, looking
at the application set, one would have to think that there are sub-segments within the
senior-on-the-web population that do different things, or act in different manners.
Source: Technology User Profile
The one thing that is clear is that this is a significant segment, with more
than 6 million households with 60+ year old heads on the web. We'll have to explore this
topic more in future InfoBeads.
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