Tech Generation Gap Narrows

The dominance of the Millennial generation when it comes to technology has ebbed during the past year, largely because older generations are becoming more likely to engage in online activities, including visiting social networking and government websites, a new report shows.

The new "Generations Online in 2010" report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that Millenials (ages 18 to 33) still remain more likely to access the Internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. They also clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to communication and entertainment activities, such as visiting social networking websites, instant messaging, reading blogs and playing online games.

But in 2010, Generation X (age 34 to 45) and older cohorts were more likely than Millenials to engage in several other online activities, such as visiting government websites and obtaining financial information online.

And in areas that are typically dominated by Millennials, older generations are making some headway, Pew found. While the youngest generations are still more likely to use social networking websites, for example, the fastest growth on those websites has come from the oldest Internet users (age 74 and older), who have increased their usage of social networks from 4 percent to 16 percent since 2008, Pew found.

In addition, some key Internet activities are becoming more popular across all age groups, such as e-mail, search engine use, seeking health information, getting news, buying products, doing online banking, making travel reservations and making online charitable donations, the report found.

Finally, while few of the online activities Pew studied had decreased in popularity for any age group, one notable exception was the popularity of blogging. Only half as many online teens work on a blog as did in 2006, and blogging also has declined in popularity among the Millennial generation, a development that could be related to the rising popularity of social networking websites, the study noted. At the same time, however, use of blogging increased among most older generations, causing the rate of blogging for all online adults overall to rise from 11 percent in late 2008 to 14 percent in 2010.

"While the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, Internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter," the report states.