Most baby boomers surfing the Web are visiting video sites, and many are interacting on social networking sites, according to a survey by the NPD Group.
NPD’s recent “Entertainment Trends in America” tracking study shows that 61% of baby boomers who go Web surfing visit video streaming or download sites such as YouTube and TV network Web sites. Among boomers, 41% had visited social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Younger Web surfers, 13-to-34-year olds, are much more likely to go to social networking sites, and are likely to do so more often, than are baby boomers. But boomers who are into social networking visited such sites an average eight times in the past three months.
The study shows that more than half of all Web users (57%) visited a social networking site in the past three months. Results appear to fly in the face of conventional wisdom that young Web surfers dominate multimedia activity online.
“There’s an ongoing misconception that certain Web activities are the exclusive domain of young people,” Russ Crupnik, NPD entertainment analyst, said in a statement.
Baby boomers are Web “videophiles” are more likely to buy a CD, a DVD or a movie ticket, the survey found.
Web surfers of all ages use e-mail almost universally (97%). Shopping is the only other nearly universal online pursuit: 80% of those surveyed purchased something online in the past three months. And in that pursuit, boomers reign, with young adults reporting fewer virtual shopping trips than older consumers, probably because they lack credit cards.
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