In a very interesting poll done by Ipsos, there is a slow by significant trend to older individuals taking up blogging. In an article posted by South African news service news24.com , there are examples of groups of seniors blogging from old age homes, seniors vlogging on YouTube, and others yet blogging from the privacy of their own homes. Perhaps Don Crowdis isn’t the only nonagenerian blogger on the planet!
Bucking the trend that the aged have difficulty with turning on computers, hooking up to the interwebs and reading their emails, the European poll of 2 200 web surfers in five European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) found that 14% of those aged 45-54, and 11% of those between 55 and 64, read blogs and forums – not far from the overall average of 17%.
The funniest part of the article is the backhanded age-ism behind a quote attributed to the head of Ipsos’s Technology Division in explaining why older surfers were taking to blogging:
“That’s pretty logical, because blogs take time to read, and old people often have that time, and they’re more alone,”
Nevertheless, for a breakdown and examples of senior citizen blogging head over to news24.com for a report that, for me anyway, was really pretty mindblowing. I suspect that most of our own opinions are colored by the few individuals we do meet who might have trouble with technology; clearly, however, there is a subset of seniors who are not only keen to try things like blogging, but will avidly take it up as well.
