The Web is the playground of youth
Fascinating chart over at Businessweek depicting online activity. It validates my instinctual reaction to the common criticism about the Web, especially in the late 'nineties and early oughties - that the minority of people will want to be active creators. That was an age-biased view, born of the passivity bred into the boomers by mass media and mass consumption.
In every the category except "spectator" and "inactives", the older boomers (51-61) don't show up more more than seniors, and even the "young boomers" (41-50) are pretty absent.
Click the image for a full-size, highly readable chart on BusinessWeek's site. Oh, and who knew stodgy old BusinessWeek had it in them to create such a tufte-y chart?
2 comments:
Being a Gen Xer, I was initially a little surprised at the numbers for Gen X, but then realised I'm in IT and had allowed that to cloud my otherwise normally crystal clear thinking. ;-)
I'm afraid "the glass teat" conditioned the average Gen Xer to passivity from a very early age. I think that unless you moved a cursor with a mouse by age 2 you're doomed to be on the skinny side of the online interactivity curve.
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