It’s hard to be hip in Chicago in February.
The city turns into a colony of down-filled panda bears sporting whatever ear-flapped and pom-pom-topped headgear promises to retain body heat. We swallow whole medicine cabinets of over-the-counter remedies for snow-shovel shoulder, icy-sidewalk keister, and whatever exotic strain of the flu was brewing in our elementary schools before Christmas.
As I say, it’s tough to feel with it in winter in this place. So I was hoping to be let off the hook for a New Year’s resolution I made to friends to update my social network pages several times a week.
See, I have the obligatory profile pages in Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. But I watch in amazement as my friends — who all have demanding jobs and full family lives — manage to keep their content up to date, posting new items to their feed just about daily.
Meanwhile, I add something to my social profiles once every three months or so. (I like to think of it as a policy of seasonal updates.) Basically, I’m too old to do this stuff, I tell myself; I’m no teenager. And my friends need to grow out of it.
But the Pew Internet & American Life Project says people my age — or at least out of teen age — are in fact the majority in social networks. Research it published last month found that 35% of adults now have a social profile page. That’s lower than the 65% of online teens who have a page, but since teens are way outnumbered by adults over 18, that finding actually means adults make up the bulk of the membership on social networks overall.
I can take a little comfort in the age/usage stats among that “adult” crowd. Pew found that 75% of 18- to 24-year-old adults who’re online have a social net page, as do 57% of those age 25 to 34. The figure falls to 30% for 35- to 44-year-olds, and drops further to 19% for 45- to 54-year-olds. Ten percent of those age 55 to 64 have a profile on at least one social network, and 7% of online adults 65 and older do too.
Granted, simply having a page doesn’t qualify one as an “active” network user. Among the adults polled by Pew, 37% said they visited social networking sites daily. Twenty-three percent logged in every few days, and 155 reported checking the social nets once a week. About 23% copped to showing up less often than that.
Those are my people. How come I can’t make any Facebook friends among those sluggards?
Looks like it’s time to get off my icebound aspirations and start updating my pages.
Network
