Are You a Typical "Older" Blog Reader? - Senior Planet from AARP

Do you read blogs online?

Pingdom, a Sweden-based web company that monitors website traffic, recently released its findings from a study on readership demographics for the world’s top blogs. The results surprised Pingdom – and they may surprise you, too.

With the enormous reach of the blogosphere – Pingdom’s article notes that Tumblr and WordPress alone have more than 157 million blogs – Pingdom editors found that the average blog reader is (a whopping) 38 years old. It’s an interesting and unexpected fact, given that some of the most trafficked blogs are visited mostly by the youngest readers. Older audiences – especially those over age 67 – still account for only a small percentage of total readership.

Blogs Most Visited by Older Readers

So what are some of the sites that above-average (age) readers are checking out? And what are you missing out on, if you’re a typical senior? According to Pingdom’s charts, older readers are more inclined to visit political, financial, and/or discussion-based blogs.

Among them are (click on the linked names to visit the blogs):

New York Times sites like The Caucus the Times’s political blog), ArtsBeat, and Paul Krugman (the Times’s op-ed columnist)
More conservative-minded sites like TownHall and AmericanThinker
Political bloggers like conservative Michelle Malkin.

Blogs Most Visited by Younger Readers

Our younger (we’ll call them “below average”) counterparts, on the other hand, are far likelier to visit sites with a lighter and/or brasher tone of voice, along with the occasional dose of celebrity gossip.

Among them are (click on the linked names to visit the blogs):

Gawker
Jezebel
comedy hotspots like FunnyOrDie
techy, gadget-based hubs like Gizmodo and TheNextWeb

In other words, older (and, stereotypically more “serious”) audiences seem to gravitate to the more “serious” sites – which is a shame, in our opinion, since many, if not all, of the younger-skewing blogs have something significant, interesting, and downright fun to offer readers of all ages.

Click here to take a look at Pingdom’s list of popular blogs by age range.

Then let us know in the comments box below: Do you represent the “average” reader for your age group? What are your favorite blogs to read? Would you avoid reading a blog that skews towards a younger readership?

COMMENTS

One response to “Are You a Typical “Older” Blog Reader?”

Born when FDR was president, which makes me a “senior citizen,” I cannot stand the silly garbage coming from bloggers under 30-years. They have no experience of Vietnam, Korea, World War II, or the Cold War. They’ve never had to “lock-and-load” for their freedom of speech. Everything’s taken for granted, like we, their parents and grandparents, got it for free, like air and water. No, we had to “work” for what they have today. Education in the 50’s and 60’s was hard work. You had to know how to spell, learn the “times-tables,” know where food comes from – the family farm. We respected our elders, or got our butts kicked. Bob Dylan was a poet, not a counter-revolutionary, although he didn’t know it at the time. Hanoi Jane Fonda was and is a traitor. Social Media has made silly fools running amok worldwide. Have a nice day.

Reply to Karl Viking