Archive for June 29th, 2009

A quick follow up to my last post about how the generations understand communication and influence online.  A small data point, but an enlightening one.  Last week I went to my 25th business school reunion at Stanford.  We are a very close as classes go, so it is always great to come back together and catch up.  While I was there, I realized no one had set up a Facebook group for us to share, so I took the initiative and did so – setting up the Stanford GSB 1984 group.  In the process I discovered two fascinating facts:

1. About 90% of my class didn’t even have Facebook accounts.  That is truly staggering, when you consider that many of these folks still live and work in Silicon Valley and have a mindset for trying whatever is new and exciting. 
2. In terms of classes – only 2 from the 1970′s have a Facebook group, 3 from the 1980s (including mine), 8 from the 1990s (and all from 1995 on), and every class from 2000 on (including the Classes of 2010 and 2011).  The 1995 break is very telling – that is the year the World Wide Web exploded into public consciousness as Mosaic and then the Netscape browser took off.

The takewaway for me is that the age at which the true “digital divide” occurs between those who grew up with the Internet as either an environment or a context and those who didn’t is now about 39 years old.  This assumes that the average age of someone graduating from the GSB in 1995 was 25 years of age.  This corresponds with what I have previously said about the online generations and where the age split is between them. 

Always nice to get confirmation of one’s hypotheses, even if it is only one small datapoint.

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