Online Age Ghettos
Solitude: A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.
-Josh Billings
Words of Wellness (1991)
Edited by Joseph Sutton
Much of the conversation this year at the 6th Annual What’s Next Boomer Business Summit in Las Vegas emphasized creating online communities and “social marketing.” One central theme last year seemed to be “content is king,” meaning; compelling information will drive traffic to your web site. This year the mantra was “connection is king.”
In plain English (not the privileged code of internet marketers), interesting information and useful resources will help bring visitors to your web site. And now more than ever before creating an “online community” where people can meet and discuss issues is essential to success.
In a number of conversations I had with attendees I heard that several of the highly funded web sites focusing on a specific group of individuals, say,…born from 1946-64, were not doing as well as initially planned.
Online Age Ghettos
I began to think about why it might be that online communities focusing on a specific group of people, say,…born from 1946-64, may be experiencing attrition. Then it dawned on me that “online communities” are not unlike “real communities” in that given the choice most people want to “live” in multigenerational “neighborhoods.”
The crux of the issue is at the heart of aging in place—namely, most people desire to live in communities of all ages, not just their own. They find it more rewarding and enriching.
Betty Friedan described the “problem” of age and society’s narrow definition of aging as perceived only as decline from youth. In her treatise, The Fountain of Age (1993), Friedan suggests older adults are seen by society as a “problem” to be kept away from the rest of society; not to remind us of ourselves. Housed in “age ghettos” (p. 59), older adults are segregated from the village. Could the same be true for online villages?
Betty has since left us, but the term “age ghetto” remains in the minds of most who have read her book—including mine. The concept is useful here in that “online age ghettos” may be the problem of too narrowly targeted online communities.
A web site that seems to be thriving is grandparent.com which emphasizes multigenerational connections and is inclusive in its demographic reach. What a winning formula…besides who can resist grand kids!
See
Ideas on aging-in-community Senior CoHousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living by Charles Durrett
2 Comments for this entry
jim.reynolds
Patrick,
First, as a general comment, I want to compliment you for what I think is an outstanding web site and a great service. I will be reading and returning often.
Regarding your observation about the age ghettos, I’ve noticed the same trend you observe about their lack of success to date. Grandparents.com hit the single most positive aspect of aging – people love their grandkids. They’ll visit for that and, while there, engage in other activities. They do not associate negative ideas with being a grandparent. But just as 50-year-olds get offended when they get an AARP card in the mail, many aging citizens do not want to identify themselves as being in the target market that the sites are pitching.
I’ve also found a remarkable failure on the part of the health care and health services industry to adopt web technologies in ways that would provide tremendous advantage to this population. There is a recent push for electronic medical records but that is all on the back end. Almost no one is using Web 2.0 technologies in ways that provide advantage to the aging in place population. I believe that is an area of unexplored potential.
Patrick Roden PhD
Jim, first, thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Secondly, I’d have to agree on several of your points; 1) grandparenting is a positive aspect of aging and grandparents.com has nailed it—tapping into the joy of that role is genius 2) web 2.0 applications for aging-in-place are still in their infant stages.
I live in Portland, Oregon which is at the center of aging-in-place technologies development with Intel and Oregon Health Sciences University leading the way. To keep updated on their work see: http://www.orcatech.org/ and you may want to visit Laurie Orlov’s web site; http://www.ageinplacetech.com/
I think a theme that runs through all of this is a fear of aging due in part to the medical model’s historical treatment of aging as a disease process. But, that’s a topic for another blog.
As for the AARP card…
Mature Market Experts Gem of The Day: Online Age Ghettos | Country Victorian News, August 24th, 2009 on 9:21 pm
[...] Market Experts: stats and news you can use on boomers, seniors, and the mature market – Online Age Ghettos Solitude: A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay. -Josh Billings Words of Wellness (1991) [...]