The conclusion is that though new Facebook users are increasingly older in developed economies, it is because the penetration amongst younger age groups is already very high. Marketers now have a larger audience across age segments, on the Facebook; who they can target and engage.

The buzz is that Facebook users are now increasingly older. While this defies common belief that Facebooking is primarily youth-driven, it also begs the question that should marketers focus more on older segments. To explore the details Telenow.net conducted a study.

As a part of the stud,y TeleNow.net selected 5 countries across 5 continents – US, Italy, Ghana, India and Australia and looked at the population in groups of 5 years segments as provided by United Nations. Then we looked at facebook users in each of these segments and computed the facebook users as a % of the population for each of these segments. TeleNow.net concluded that:

1) In developed economies, US, Italy and Australia the penetration of facebook amongst age groups 15-19 and 20-24 was > 80% with penetration reaching as high as ~100% for 15-19 age groups in Australia and Italy. So understandably any growth in these countries in the number of facebook users has to come from older age groups

2) In the developing economies of Ghana and India % of facebook was between 0-5% for age groups 15-19 and 20-24. In these countries, access to the internet is limiting the penetration of social networking across all age segments. However, there is still a strong possibility of growth in a number of facebook users to come from younger age segments as the penetration is still low. It is at best inconclusive as to who will drive growth in future.

The conclusion is that though new facebook users are increasingly older in developed economies, it is because the penetration amongst younger age groups is already very high in these economies. Marketers now have a larger audience across age segments on the facebook who they can target to engage.