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Social networking has been well documented for the younger sets of online users. But what about those aged 40 or over?

The baby boomer generation has the most discretionary income, which would make them the most attractive demographic for online marketing. The only problem is… we may be getting ahead of ourselves.

Take, for example, social networking and other Social Media Marketing phenomena. As indicated in the chart above, networking isn’t much of a pastime for the middle-aged and up. Truth be told, as major breadwinners, the post-WWII generation probably just don’t have the discretionary time to superpoke each other.

But it seems that when certain formats and technologies become common and popular, and thus accessible and easy to use, the older demos have no problem following the trend. Just take a look at the following chart from eMarketer:

Email, instant messaging, and texting are basically old hat (no pun intended) for all age groups. As social networking grows, it is not unreasonable to assume that there’s potential for baby boomers to join up in the not-too-distant future. But in order for this to happen, networking has to possess obvious incentives like email and chat. And as related before, social media sites have so much overlap with each other and their functions are not always immediately comprehended. Like, tell me again why I need to display all my saved sites on these social bookmarking places?

Perhaps marketers will have to wait until someone dreams up a networking site that will suit the older sets. One would have to put in consideration about the lifestyles, amount of time, and values of web users aged 40 and over. Until then, however, the “old” bastions of Internet Marketing – email marketing, search engine marketing, and direct banner ads – seem to remain the best bets for reaching this demographic.