Social Networks and People Over 50

As I was posting and tagging old photographs today I noticed that perhaps one in three of my ol’ friends, classmates and childhood neighbors– were NOT online, not on Facebook, not even on Linkedin. Sure they can be called. They can certainly be emailed. But they don’t participate in any of the main social tools available. I don’t judge. I’m just saying I wasn’t easily able share a link or photos with these folks.

Later this year (much later!) I will turn 50.  When I step back to view the landscape I’d say relatively few people OLDER than I am engage in these social networks (particularly once you leave Silicon Valley). Conversely, almost everyone YOUNGER than me is. So while there are no pithy names for my end-of-the-boomer generation, I’d suggest we seem to have evolved into a grey zone of the digitally disconnected.

If this was a war, and I’m not saying we’re at war with the young, but IF this was a war, we would be totally outflanked. Being connected makes a group highly nimble, information flowing rapidly in all directions. It’s not just “socializing” and it’s easy to paint the digitally social with a brush of “what I had for lunch” but the fact is that being communicative and connected is a distinct advantage in many fields, perhaps all fields—finding businesses and getting jobs, networking, ideation, education… and by excluding ourselves wholey from that realm, everyone over 50 (and honestly, anyone who self selects out) is crippling themselves.  It’s true in many industries: people want to work with other people they like, we want to work with friends or at least “potential” friends. Hollywood is like this. Out of sight out of mind. If they keep bumping into you at lunch you have a better chance of working with them at some point. In real estate it’s location, location, location—you have to pay to get bumped into easily. In the digital realm, you’re the property and the network is the location. You don’t want to be “spam.” But you do want to be found.

I used to think this was a small thing, just a lifestyle choice, and that folks who abandoned (or never tried) using social tools were just folksy. But today I’m thinking they’re doomed, clinging to their horse, riding along the side of highways cursing the speeding cars. Not being able to be tagged in an old picture isn’t the problem but it was a symptom of the real problem: a digital divide where many of my friends seem to have camped on the wrong side of the chasm. To my unFacebooked friends I say “give in.” I’d post this on my wall, but they’d never see it. Anyway, I’m just preaching to the choir…