What are the basic facts about boomer-senior connectivity?  Pew Research and others have been releasing report after report about technology use, but without a summary sheet, marketers might not be able to see the forest for the trees. So here are the basics from the past year of Pew-published surveys – to my knowledge, the only source for this number of categories that include 50+ age cohorts:

What’s striking about these numbers? While there has been some hype about the growing boomer cohort on Facebook and quite a bit of noise about gadgets and boomers, Pew Research numbers may be the ones to study – since their methods are at least consistent among their own reports.   Boomers slightly outpace the population overall in the use of E-Readers, but otherwise are in the tech use shadow of the population overall, and seniors – well, not so much of much.

Older adults are missing out on tech all over the place... Let’s invert a few of these rows and note that 58% of the 65+ age range are not online. Therefore they aren’t getting coupon discounts e-mailed to them, not seeing their grandkids’ photos online, chatting online with no one, never mind using Benefits Checkup or obtaining other savings by buying online -- especially airline tickets, where the message-on-hold makes the cost of a call abundantly clear.  Yet, even with the percentages lower than the population overall, we are not talking about small numbers. With 39 million people aged 65+, and boatloads of boomers turning 65 every day, 94% of seniors don’t have an E-Reader, even though buying eBooks is cheaper and the font is bigger and brighter. So that’s four million seniors who have smartphones – and around 19 million boomers. 

...But marketers are missing out on older adults.  This just in from Pew, older adults use search engines, no, really, they do!  So let's say that it's a given that large numbers of older users are out there, searching for something online, armed with some devices, waiting to be sold an E-Reader, and so on and on. And this week must have struck fear into the hearts of the aging-related industries – whether it is housing, travel, technology, or vehicles. Furthermore, local small retail businesses appear to be suffering the most – witness the stores closed and the For Lease signs appearing in upscale suburbs. At the same time, the online coupon industry is ever more crowded with new behemoths -- Amazon, Google are joining upstarts Groupon, Living Social, etc. So many discounts, so little time. Ironically, the senior discount coupon world has been around forever, but the online coupon discounters seem to not quite get the older adult market – and maybe it is because they know nothing about their use or ownership of technology -- and haven't grasped the combined implications of all of those Pew surveys.  Thoughts?