"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety"- Antony & Cleopatra, Act II, Scene 2.
It's pretty easy to fall into the trap of assuming that Facebook is a young person's game; after all, it was created by a college student and was only available to individuals with .edu email addresses originally. But ever since it opened to the general public in late 2006, the age demographic has been expanding.
According to a report in March of 2009, Inside Facebook noted that there were more Facebook users 26-44 than 18-25 today. And in a separate report, they also noted that Facebook is seeing massive increases in adoption among users 35-65. In fact, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is still women over 55.
Fast forward to today - looking at the 70 million-plus users from the U.S. on Facebook - and you've got a remarkable statistic: over one-third of Facebook's users are over the age of 35. And about half of that group is in the 45+ age range.
Personally, I can attest to the number of people who are using it for reconnecting with old high school and college friends. I've heard from my fair share of people from times long past. [Side note: it's kind of ironic that Facebook is somewhat returning to its college roots.]
I would imagine that the older demographic is also using it somewhat for work purposes; I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of data on how each age group uses the tool - what percent for work, what percent for personal, and which use it for both. I have a strong suspicion that there'd be a spike in the third category.
Of the recent growth, some of it is attributable to more activity from parents, relatively speaking, since the kids are home from college. It will be interesting to see if that level of activity is just a summer anamoly or if it continues.
What do you think of these numbers? Any surprises here for you?