Generations Online in 2010
Overview — Generations Online in 2010 — There are still notable differences by generation in online activities, but the dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Pew Internet's second swing at its generational series, updating the baseline it set with its first "Generations" report in 2009 — the year a separate study also broke down how different generations used Facebook differently. The through-line goes back further still: the New York Times flagged "the graying of the web" back in 2007, and Ars Technica had already punctured the myth that young users are naturally skilled searchers with its look at why the so-called Google generation wasn't so hot at Googling.
What changed in the 2010 edition is directional, not just descriptive: Pew confirms notable generational differences still persist across online activities, but says the Millennial dominance it documented in 2009 has slipped in many of them. For anyone building demographic segments off Pew's data — advertisers, publishers, product teams — the 2009 snapshot is now stale.
First-order effects
- Marketers and publishers who segmented audiences around the 2009 finding that Millennials led most online activities lose their anchor: Pew's own data shows those leads eroding, forcing a re-cut of age-based targeting models built on last year's report.
- Older cohorts (Gen X and above) gain standing as mainstream internet users rather than laggards, consistent with the graying-of-the-web pattern the New York Times identified as early as 2007.
Second-order effects
- Research shops and media analysts will have to reconcile this with the 2009 Facebook generational data, where cohort behavior diverged sharply on social platforms even as general activity gaps narrowed.
- Products pitched as youth-first may face pressure to justify that positioning against adoption curves flattening by generation rather than steepening.
Third-order effects
- If the convergence Pew documents holds, "generation" loses explanatory power as a segmentation variable for general internet use, and analysis shifts to what differentiates cohorts within specific activities like social networking or search — the questions the 2008-2009 coverage was already asking.
The trend: Generational gaps in overall online activity are narrowing as older cohorts catch up, pushing demographic analysis from who is online to how each generation behaves in specific activities.