A recent study has revealed that more and more people over the age of 65 are signing up to Facebook.
According to the Pew Research Center, over the last year the number of American seniors using the social platform had increased by 11% to just over half. This would, of course, be of great interest to companies that cater to older clients, with this possibly constituting a new Internet marketing base.
However, while 56% of the over 65s polled were now on Facebook, using it to keep in touch with friends and post their thoughts to news feeds, it did not mean that other services were missing out.
On Twitter, the number of older users had doubled, while Instagram had seen its share of the over-65 market jump sixfold.
Pew’s research indicated that more and more older Americans have been turning to social media since 2012, with this trend likely to be taking hold in the rest of the developed world too.
Overall, it appears that Facebook is the social network that is attracting the most over 65s, with the broader service it offers assumed by a number of commentators to be the main draw. This is compared to sites such as Twitter, which can at times be quite niche and a little daunting for some users to get into.
The increase in older users comes at a time when some researchers are advocating the use of social platforms as a way for pensioners to handle depression and deal with isolation.
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