Oh, golly, yes, social media have changed the face of retirement."
So says Donna Held, 61, of Salisbury Township. She is retired and a big proponent of social media. Like Held, an increasing proportion of retired people use social media for connection, support, education, even business (call it "retirement lite").
"It sure has changed retirement," says Howard Levin, 85, of Cherry Hill. "Of course, it can become addictive - not a big problem if you're retired." For more and more seniors it offers, in the words of Judy Shepps Battle, 71, of Kendall Park, N.J., "an experience that just wasn't there before."
Facebook, first and foremost, is family glue, a way to keep track of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And auld acquaintance need not be forgot. "You can keep in touch with past schoolmates and coworkers," Held says. "Even if you're homebound for some reason, you can still keep up the social interaction."
A study in April by the Pew Internet Research Project tracked technology use among older adults. While they lag behind the national average, about 59 percent of respondents reported using the Internet, a 6 percent jump from 2012, and 26 percent more than in 2008. Among those, 71 percent said they went online daily.
To this media demographic, mobility matters less than contact. While most older adults (77 percent) have a cellphone, only 18 percent own smartphones. Users prefer laptops and tablets. Anthony Gionson, 67, of Hilo, Hawaii, was talked into getting a tablet by his son Ilihia, and now he's constantly on it. "Literally, the iPad has made it seem like a 'small world,' " he writes.
Among online seniors, 27 percent use social networking sites. Facebook is much the preferred medium; older adults don't do Twitter so much (6 percent). When they do, however, they're great. Muriel B., 95, of Manhattan, known as "Quilting Muriel," has 52,600 followers and is one of the funniest people on Twitter: "In Florida, 'Happy Fall' is said only by people who are in the will." John Cleese, 74, has 2.7 million followers. Philly's own Bill Cosby, 77, has 3.4 million.
As for business, you don't need to stop if you don't want to. Battle keeps doing the writing that was part of her professional life: Social media, she says, allow "my writing to have a much wider paying and nonpaying audience than back in the old pre-cyberspace days." Sally Renata, 70, of Surfside Beach, S.C., sells her artwork online, as does Cynthia Nelms-Byrne, 65, of Dubuque, Iowa. Richard Pizer, 73, owns the Sprucewold Lodge in Portland, Maine. He and spouse Dana plan to use social media "to promote the efforts to sell the lodge, and perhaps to try to develop a specialized bus tour business by utilizing some of our experience from the lodge years."
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Social media keep retirees connected