The Generation Gap: Facebook Use in the Older Generation
“Boomers treat Facebook like it’s Reddit” my roommate says to me from across the room, looking up from her phone, seemingly astounded by what she just read. We’ve all heard an older adult or parent mutter, “those kids and their damn phones” under their breath, and the fact that young adults are criticized for being chronically online isn’t news to anyone. Right around the start of the pandemic, however, I noticed a slight shift in the conversation of social media use. Rather than focusing solely on the damage social media is causing for our youth, social media users started to note the strange and unmistakable etiquette (or lack thereof) of members of the Baby Boomer generation on Facebook. Something about the strong, unfiltered opinions, brash political statements, and blatant misinformation posts really resonated with the internet community and received a tremendous amount of attention (Gebel, 2019). The very existence of Facebook groups such as “a group where we all pretend to be boomers” (which has around 283,000 members of mostly millennial and Gen Z ages) implies that there is a conversation to be had about the way that Boomers use Facebook. The discourse that happens in these groups is exactly as the name implies: members post as if they were boomers. Some examples might include randomly typing in all caps, misspelling words, commenting in incomplete phrases, or sharing unnecessary thoughts. I’ll include some examples below.
So, why do they post so often? How are they comfortable sharing their unsolicited, and often political, opinion? And what does this have to do with CPM? There’s plenty to discuss, so let’s dive in.
First of all, why do boomers – generally speaking – post on Facebook so often? According to research done by Sheldon et al. (2021), older adults rely on Facebook and Instagram to compensate for the lack of social activity and face-to-face interactions in their daily lives. Similar to how people living with eating disorders (PLWED; discussed in blog #1) used social networking sites as a way to connect with a community of people with similar life experiences, the older generations find and interact with people of similar beliefs on Facebook.While Millennials primarily use Facebook for relationship maintenance (Sheldon, 2008), Baby Boomers and Traditionalists tended to use it for diversion and entertainment.
Second, why do Boomers have such an affinity for posting extreme right-wing opinionated posts, and how do they feel so comfortable sharing these deep opinions? Like we discussed in blog #1, a big part of the reason people turn to social media to connect with others is because they are further in control of the flow of their personal information when disclosing online. By opting to join groups of similar-minded individuals on Facebook, these people are less likely to have their opinions questioned and therefore, they may feel more comfortable disclosing. A large part of Communication Privacy Management (CPM) is the decision making process of deciding who to disclose to, what to disclose, and how much to disclose. As primary owners of information, we are more likely to disclose when we are confident that the person receiving our information will react in a neutral to positive manner and will respect our privacy boundaries. By these rules, it makes sense that people search for groups of like-minded people with whom they can share their political opinions. Once a person is used to having their opinions being accepted in a smaller Facebook group, then they may feel more confident sharing with the wider Facebook community.
So what then, exactly, makes Boomers so likely to share such loud opinions, particularly right-wing propaganda and false information? Past research has shown that it is the same factors that make older Americans susceptible to financial scams that make them vulnerable to misinformation such as lower impulse control, slower cognitive function, and higher rates of social isolation (Lachs et al., 2015). As a result of the Facebook algorithm, it is easy to go down a rabbit hole of misinformation. It has become an all-to-common narrative: The older relative who watches strictly Fox News, the alarming Facebook posts, Facebook timelines slowly starting to fill with links to radical websites like Gateway Pundit and Russia Today, or even Pizzagate and QAnon. This exposure can heavily alter the way that Boomers view information, making them more likely to share it, simply because it is always there. Per the cultivation theory, we know that seeing a certain message often enough will influence the way a person views the world to view that message as what is “normal.” This being said, to tie us back to CPM, because an older adult may engage with many far-right messages every day on Facebook, they are likely to view Facebook as an appropriate and receptive audience to far-right ideals. This, in turn, makes disclosing ultra-right opinions easy for adults of the older generation. When we view our audience as receptive and positive to our message, we are more likely to disclose our personal information. While these days Boomer etiquette on Facebook is simply a meme, we can see CPM at work in the mind of your crazy conspiracy theorist Uncle who insists on arguing politics at every Thanksgiving dinner.
Works Cited
Gebel, M. (2019, January 13). Baby Boomers share nearly 7 times as many ‘fake news’ articles on Facebook as adults under 30, study finds. Business Insider. Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomers-more-likely-to-share-fake-news-on-facebook-study-2019-1
Lachs, M. S., & Han, S. D. (2015). Age-Associated Financial Vulnerability: An Emerging Public Health Issue. Annals of Internal Medicine, 163(11), 877–878.
Sheldon, P., Antony, M. G., & Ware, L. J. (2021). Baby Boomers’ use of Facebook and Instagram: uses and gratifications theory and contextual age indicators. Heliyon, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06670
Sheldon, P., 2008. The relationship between unwillingness to communicate and students’ Facebook use. J. Media Psychol.: Ther. Method. Appl. 20, 67–75.
