Genealogy in the Golden Years
In the article Genealogy in the Golden Years, about.com report:
Of the 63% of Americans who go online, only 25% are over the age of 65, according to a 2004 survey of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. But when the subject is researching family history and genealogy, the elderly rank ahead of the other age categories -- 36 percent, compared to 21 percent for young adults and 15 percent for 30- to 49-year-olds. Now, these stats are interesting ... especially when I compare them to the preliminary results of my IGCS survey. Now, bearing in mind my figures are not restricted to the USA, of the 3,125 respondants who answered the question "In which of these groups is your age?", just over 24% were over the age of 65. Although it is unclear how the about.com article defines 'young adults', if we assume it to mean an age of 24 and under, this figure is less than 4% in the IGCS survey.
I shall have a look at the figures for those respondants living in the USA and see how they compare to the PEW report. back to top
Genealogy in the Golden Years was posted 3/16/2005 08:26:00 AM AEST |
There are currently 3 comments for
Genealogy in the Golden Years:
I don't think it is remarkable to find a large proportion of over-65s using the Internet for genealogy compared with other age groups, since over-65s are over-represented in off-line genealogy too. Since there are more barriers to older people getting online (in terms of education and having a computer in the house etc), clearly seniors who do go online need a higher level of motivation to overcome the barriers. Clearly having an offline hobby that can benefit from being online (like genealogy) may provide the motivation to overcome the barriers to go online.
As to the difference in statistics to your IGCS survey, I suspect you have to factor in the different surveying approaches. The IGCS participants are already online, the participants are found through advertising the survey in certain genealogy forums, and the participants are self-selecting to participate in the survey -- all of which may skew your data. Whereas the PEW report seemed to do telephone interviews with (I think) randomly selected people.
Actually, thinking about your IGCS stats, I suspect there is another effect happening.
Traditionally (meaning in the time before online existed), genealogy was very much a hobby of older people rather than younger people, but as older people are less likely to be on the Internet than younger people, I would expect to find the age profile of online genealogists to be a bit lower than you might expect for older people and a bit higher for younger people.
However, this somewhat assumes that people's interest in genealogy is an independent variable to their being online. I've already argued why older people interested in genealogy have more of a motivation to get online compared with older people not interested in genealogy, but the other side to this coin is that younger people online are probably more likely to develop an interest in genealogy than they would have done in the pre-Internet era.
One of the reasons (I think) that genealogy was traditionally more popular with older people was partly the time required for research. Pre-Internet, genealogy required writing lots of letters and going to lots of family history societies, archives and libraries (many of which are only open on weekdays) -- all of which favours the older retired person over the younger working person.
What online genealogy (and computer-based genealogy e.g. CDs of BDM data) has improved is the ability of the "time-poor" to make progress with their family history. So perhaps the presence of online genealogy resources and the online genealogy community is in fact increasing the participation of the "younger adult" community in genealogy.
While I agree with the comments already posted, there is another aspect that has had a big impact on my family, now very extended. Because of the immediacy of email, we share not only genea information, but also photographs, joys and sorrows. This creates bonds and a closeness that may not be so successful if we lived closer and came face to face. The internet breaks down all barriers, should there by any, and truly draws an ever widening circle of families together around the world.
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