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Golden oldies take to blogging
20/12/2006 14:18 - (SA)
Paris - There was a time when the internet was almost the exclusive domain of youth. But that sort of ageism will soon be irrelevant, judging by the small but growing phenomenon of seniors turning to blogging.
The greying of the web recently hit the spotlight in Britain, where a 79-year-old grandfather - who goes by the handle 'geriatric1927' - jumped straight on to the latest trend in blogging: vlogging (as in video blogging).
The widower has found fame as the oldest active member on YouTube, the video hosting site owned by Google on which he recounts to the camera stories from his own grandparents who lived in Victorian England (www.youtube.com/profile).
In France, the residents of an old people's home in Brittany contribute to a joint blog called "Alleuxnautes" (www.alleux.over-blog.com), and a "storytelling grandma", Laurence Lamiable, has found success on www.abreuvetascience.net.
A retired Belgian woman, Annie (www.blog.syrie.be), has also been giving glimpses of her life in Syria, where she has been living for the past four years.
Right now, they and other senior bloggers are on the fringe of the internet revolution, and stand out from the majority of their peers, many of whom remain dumbfounded by anything more complicated than e-mail.
But studies show their number is growing, especially in the 50-70 year age range.
A French poll by the Ipsos institute carried out in October on 2 200 web surfers in five European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) found that 14% of those aged 45-54, and 11% of those between 55 and 64, read blogs and forums - not far from the overall average of 17%.
'For the young, the blog is a showcase...'
"Certainly, the tool is much more common among the young, but the gap between the 25-34 year-olds and the seniors is not as big as that," said Alexis Helcmanocki, the head of Ipsos's new technologies division which organised the poll.
"This is the first study we've done of this, and we didn't expect to see such a high proportion of blog readers among seniors," he said.
Indeed, clicking on to blogs is more popular in the older generations than cellphone text-messaging or internet instant messenging, he added.
"That's pretty logical, because blogs take time to read, and old people often have that time, and they're more alone," Helcmanocki said.
And where there's a growing market, there are advertisers ready to pounce. In the case of several sites grouping twilight bloggers (for instance www.Blog50.com, www.seniorplanet.fr and www.seniorcitizens.com) they are already active.
For those setting up blogs, the appeal goes beyond the adolescent egotism of many of the sites set up by those with less life experience.
"For the young, the blog is a showcase, it's all "me, me, me", but for the over-50s, we want to talk more about activities and spend more time on the writing," said Isabelle Fringuet, the founder of Senior Planet.
Her site contains articles on cooking, hiking, gardening -- but "we're still struggling a bit", she admitted, saying writing workshops had to be created to push members to create their blogs and fill out the site.
On another French site, Notre Temps, 150 bloggers are active, but 600 000 visitors click on to them every month.
"The boomers are overall avid to learn about new interactions, even if they're not always comfortable with technology. And that is only going to grow when the seniors up to 55 who are using the computer at work take up retirement," predicted the site's director, Jean-Marie Nazarenko.
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