Tablets and smartphones owners are wealthier and younger

Connecting through glass by older adults – forward, but slowly.  The Pew numbers are out and offer confirmation that -- as consumer devices -- feature phones are nearly dead and laptops may be dying. But smart phone ownership among seniors is marginally up from the previous 13% – now 18% of the 570 surveyed adults aged 65+ and 39% of boomers aged 55-64. What’s different is the dominance of the device among younger adults – 55% of those aged 45-54 and 69% of those aged 35-44 have smart phones.  Meanwhile tablet ownership among the 65+ has progressed to that same 18%. (Uh, could those be the same folks that own smart phones?)  And tablet ownership, a newer category and less dominant than smart phones, fits an older crowd: 49% of adults aged 35-44 own one, and 38% of those aged 45-54 have them.  

Why do smart phones outpace tablet ownership among older adults? Perhaps smart phone popularity is driven by the carrier message that the purchase price is under $200. (Oh, did I forget to mention that 2-year contract for monthly tiered usage levels?) New tablets, on the other hand, are pretty pricey – well north of $200. And apparently they break a lot, hence the 'month-to-month' service offer. In addition, says Pew, education and income may be a factor – 49% of those with a college degree own tablets – and 56% of adults making more than $75,000/year. We can bet that aged 65+ tablet owners have incomes of more than $75,000/year, and – as the 2011 Link∙age Technology survey indicated -- these tech adopters are married, already owned a PC, and have a wireless network.

Let us dare to dream – prices fall, usability rises.  For an older adult today, pressure is growing to get with the mobile device program, pick up a sizable data plan and participate in the joys of too much information (TMI). The adult kids are sending around YouTube videos of themselves and their kids, Facebook updates are spewing forth unabated (not well vetted either) and then there are the joys of Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and whatever else is next and new! Why can’t older adults see the appeal of being on Facebook and Twitter, describing indigestion in the moment, where the world of their followers are falling into ditches reading these tweets -- in what we used to call 'real time'?  For those not from IT trivia land, real time meant 'update immediately,' and it was quaintly contrasted with 'batch' updates, left until later. Who knew that telling all about the restaurant we’re in this very minute is a must for 'real time'?

So those without the right device are shut out of in-the-moment madness.  Is that a bad thing? Besides price, maybe it’s just too much -- too much information from people you know, too many Facebook updates from people you’ve long-forgotten or who have forgotten that you're in their 'friend' network. Maybe resisting the appeal of marketing messages from advertisers you didn’t know existed, selling everything you might not want, trying to get you to play games to alleviate boredom you didn't know you had. Maybe it bugs you that marketers are taking advantage of your GPS location, which you had to reveal to use the navigation functions of the phone, enabling more retail messages to be pushed at you, in that very same real-time. Or if you have a smart phone, is it a bad thing to turn it off once in a while (not for me, of course, since I am addicted). But if older adults in your circle have yet to buy, turn on or configure their location, sound, storage, camera, wireless, application settings and update frequency, maybe it is just as well.