Data shows that boomers are active on social media, spending around one hour 48 minutes a day browsing Facebook and Instagram. They are 19% more likely to share content than any other generation, and 58% more likely than millennials to click through to a brands website from a social media post.
Across the demographic, however, Baby Boomers share similarities in how they look to connect with brands. Thirty-five percent of Baby Boomers use social media to discover new brands, and 48% say social enables them to interact with brands and companies online.
Percentage of U.S. Baby Boomers who use selected social networks as of February 2019CharacteristicShare of U.S. Baby Boomer adultsYouTube70%Facebook68%Pinterest27%LinkedIn24%5 more rows•24 Aug 2021
However, according to data from Statista from last year, YouTube was the most popular social media platform, with 70% of boomers saying they regularly used it, compared to 68% with the social network. This was followed by Pinterest at 27%, LinkedIn at 24% and Instagram at 23%.
Baby Boomers spend 2.87 hours per week reading newspapers and magazines, compared to 1.12 hours by Millennials and 1.58 by Gen Xers. Although there is a clear hierarchy of preference and habit for each segment, consumers regularly travel between media depending on the circumstance.
Why are the baby boomers important?
As the longest-living generation in history, boomers are at the forefront of whats been called a longevity economy, whether they are generating income in the workforce or, in their turn, consuming the taxes of younger generations in the form of their Social Security checks.
Media Consumption Habits Across GenerationsGEN Z (5-25 YEARS OLD) CONSUMES MORE MEDIA OVERALL COMPARED TO OLDER GENERATIONS. MILLENNIALS (26-40 YEARS OLD) CONSUME CONTENT ACROSS A NUMBER OF MEDIA TYPES. GEN XERS (41-55 YEARS OLD) INCREASED THEIR TV VIEWING HABITS MORE THAN ANY OTHER AGE GROUP.More items
What do Baby Boomers like to watch?
Some of their most-watched categories on the platform, according to recent Google data, were entertainment, music, and news, with channels like Star News (a celebrity news channel), Fox News, and WatchJoJo (a collection of unbelievable facts) rising to the top of their watch list.