To allow you a brief peek behind the curtain, a recent conversation with a friend provided me with the inspiration to write this piece.
In passing we got to discussing my 68-year-old father-in-law and what he was doing over the bank holiday weekend.
They were shocked to find out that he was staying in and playing Destiny on his PlayStation.
They were quite simply shocked that someone of such advancing years was spending his free time on a game rather than in the library, in the garden or sitting in his living room watching Storage Hunters.
That led me down a rabbit hole of discovery as I searched high and low online to see if my father-in-law was the exception to the rule or indicative of an overall trend – that older generations are spending more and more time online.
What I found from my research was even more astonishing than first thought…
The Bold Facts
We always hear people complaining that the younger generations spend too much time on their devices. That they are obsessed with the online world and are losing touch with reality around them as a consequence.
At its most sinister, this stereotype is used by older generations to justify calling younger people lazy, rude and obnoxious.
The problem with that stereotype is two-fold, firstly it’s a lazy and ungenerous one designed to moralise about youngsters and secondly, it’s just plain wrong.
If time spent on mobile devices and online directly correlated with laziness and incompetence, then Boomers would be just as lazy and incompetent as Gen Z.
The latter you see, spend an average of 10.9 hours a day engaging with online content and only one other generation comes close to them – Boomers!
Coming in at third are Millennials, who spend just over 8 hours a day engaging with online content, and last in the list are Gen X, who spend the least time online a day.
The Specifics
Now if you just so happen to have been born before the 1964 mark you might be reading this article and spitting out your coffee.
That’s because we have way more free time than Gen Z. Yes but what are they doing on their phones?
At least we’re doing something productive and not watching dance videos on TikTok.
Well, prepare to follow that next gulp of coffee with a generous helping of humble pie as we dig down into the specifics of what the Baby Boomer generation is doing with all of their online time:
Social Media: Yes you read that right. Boomers spend most of their time online scrolling through social media and are only behind Gen Z by a couple of minutes in that regard. The only difference is that whilst TikTok and Instagram are the poison of choice for younger generations, Facebook and X are the preference of Boomers.
Watching TV: We’re all spoilt for choice when it comes to the amount of on demand content available. Boomers, like the rest of us, have taken advantage of the quality and quantity which is so easily accessible.
Conservative News Outlets: Before you cry ‘stereotyping’ or ‘generational profiling’ all of this comes from empirical data. Quantacast is a digital advertising and audience insights company that tracks demographic date of website visitors; recently it published data showing that 5 out of the top 10 (and the entire top 3) most visited sites by boomers were conservative news sites.
Gaming: To link it back to the conversation that provided the inspiration for this article, Boomers game, a lot. In a recent study it was found that Boomers spend an average of two-and-a-half hours gaming a week! It is thought that the older generation are likely to play top UK slots due to being able to play for a long while with relatively low stakes.
In Summary
Is it strange that a man in his sixties decided to spend his free time over the bank holiday weekend playing his favourite video game?
In light of everything we’ve learned over the course of this article – absolutely not!
The Baby Boomer generation by and large have raised their kids and retired – or are at least on the way – and because of that they have a lot of free time.
Increasingly they are choosing to spend that free time much like the rest of us, online, and really, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
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