Facebook Is Becoming a Chatroom for Senior Citizens

I love my mom on Facebook. And by that, I mean my mom is on Facebook, I love her, and I also love her being on it.

Whether or not you enjoy or dread your own parents being on the social platform, you better get used to it, because older adults are joining Facebook at rates faster than any other demographic.

A new study from Penn State researchers, published in the journal Computers and Human Behavior, looked at the relationship between Facebook and seniors ages 60 to 86 and tried to glean how the group might socialize online in ways similar to their younger counterparts.

What researchers found was quite sweet: Seniors primarily joined Facebook for reasons related to social bonding and social bridging. The site helped them stay connected with family and keep in touch with old friends, and also allowed them to seek out and find like-minded individuals.

Older adults also often created profiles out of sheer curiosity, the study noted.

"Because they are now familiar with social networking technology, some seniors are just starting to use Facebook out of curiosity," Eun Hwa Jung, a doctoral candidate in mass communications, said in a statement.

What didn't encourage seniors to log into Facebook was pressure from their peers or family members to use the site. So if you really want your grandma to join Facebook so she can view and comment on your vacation photos, your best tactic might be showing her how many of her friends are already on the platform.

Your grandparents and parents also probably aren't using Facebook much differently than you are. The study's findings revealed that older adults tended to favor the exact same features as younger users.

"Our findings show that message-interactivity features—for example the chatting function and wall posting—are the dominant activities for older adults' Facebook use," said Jung.

And their favorite Facebook tool? That would be the Like button, which was the preferred method of interaction for seniors motivated by social bonding.

According to 2014 demographic report by iStrategyLabs that used data from Facebook's Social Advertising platform, Facebook added 12.4 million new users age 55 and older, representing an 80.4 percent growth increase. The Pew Internet and Life Project estimates that 55 million seniors will be on Facebook by 2020.

In addition to revealing the social media habits of aging adults, the study also highlighted some ways that Facebook developers could make the platform more user-friendly to those who didn't grow up in the internet age.

One of the UX suggestions the authors proposed was making Facebook's interface more simplistic and emotionally intuitive (seniors' tendency to go for the Like button exemplifies how a feature that clearly signifies a specific emotional response is more likely to appeal to them). I asked my mom (who, for the record, is not a senior, but is very active on Facebook) which updates she'd like the social platform to implement, and she requested changes that would make it easier to find people with very common names or friends who don't have easily-identifiable profile pictures.

Seniors represent a lucrative and fast-growing market for brands and advertisers, and that could incentivize Facebook to make their platform easier to use for older adults. People who are over the age of 65 have 47 times the net worth of households made up of people ages 35 and over, and are generally more financially stable. Business are already taking advantage of older adults' browsing habits by creating tailored content for those who are active online.

So instead of complaining about your dad or grandpa adding you on Facebook, just go ahead and delete any incriminating wall posts, set those questionable college photos to private, and accept their damn friend request.