Grandma.. on Facebook??

Stereotypically, people that use the web – for entertainment, work, communication, research, etc – are fairly of a younger age range. It’s definitely a broad range, but normally we wouldn’t say that the typical Myspace or Facebook user averages at 10 or 70. Well, this interesting article I found on CNN today is about older women who are now engaged in our modern technology. This one woman in particular, who is 61 years old, has been using Facebook for about a year now and absolutely loves it! It kind of ties into a discussion we had in class today, about how parents and older people are now using Facebook for the same reason as their kids – to socialize. 

In a recent survey of 20,000 women who are over the age of 50, 63% said that they owned iPods or other MP3 players, and 30% said they used Skype. Older women are starting to take interest in our modern day technology, and I think that they really should and need to, especially since everything we have now is so revolved around technology!

I don’t know about everyone else, but my mother is definitely NOT computer savvy, and still “fears” technology and that’s why this article was so interesting to me. My mother, and both my grandmothers fear that they would break something if they touched anything. Coming from a family like this, the high numbers of older women using technology is really interesting to see.

A lot of things that we do, and activities that we participate in daily – school, news, work, and entertainment – are all highly based on computers. In a society that relies so heavily on technology, it is definitely important that women (as well as men) start taking interest in our modern day technology.

-Miko