Senior with technology, smartphone

A recent survey adds data to dispute the myth that baby boomers don’t like technology and suggests where senior living communities might want to spend time on their marketing efforts.

Baby boomers spend just about as much time a day on their smartphones as millennials do, according to the survey, by St. Louis-based senior living company Provision Living.

The company queried 1,000 baby boomers and 1,000 millennials to analyze how much time they spent, and how they spent that time, on their phones.

On average, the baby boomers spent five hours a day on their phones compared with the 5.7 hours a day millennials spent. Broken down, 35% of baby boomers and 48% of millennials spent five hours or more per day on their phones.

More similarities arose between the two groups when the researchers looked at how the groups’ screen time is spent.

The baby boomers’ top three phone pastimes each day were Facebook (60 minutes), Instagram (44 minutes) and mail (43 minutes). Comparatively, millennials spent the most time on Facebook (69 minutes), Instagram (52 minutes) and texting (48 minutes) each day. 

The apps that yielded the least amount of screen time for the baby boomers were news apps (18 minutes), Twitter (14 minutes) and YouTube (11 minutes). For millennials, music apps (27 minutes), Twitter (23 minutes) and YouTube (10 minutes) rounded out the list. 

Overall, both groups spent the majority of their time using social media.