Somehow my math teacher coerced me into AP Statistics when I was in high school. The one thing I remember most from this course was, according to my teacher, "Statistics don't lie, people lie by using statistics." He repeated this constantly throughout the year, and tried to impress upon his young students that people can manipulate statistics to make any point they are trying to make. His philosophy has made me very wary of statistics.

The Generations 2010 study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project, a project of the PewResearch Center, published their findings in a 29 page pamphlet on the differences of generations when it comes to their use of technology, specifically the internet. This study broke age groups into the categories of millennials, Gen X, Younger Boomers, Older Boomers, Silent Generation, and GI Generation (I find myself in the millennials category having been born in 1984.)

Some of the findings surprised me - for example, only 83% of millennials claim to use the internet for social network sites. Another statistic that they stated was the 80-89% of people in the millennials group uses the internet to find health information. However, across the board Health Info was something that the majority of all age groups are interested in. One other study they did was the changes in social network sites from 2008-2010, and what i found very interesting is how older generations' use of social networking jumped from 2008-2010. Gen X went from 36-62%, Younger Bookers jumped from 20-50%, Older Boomers from 9-43% and even the much older generations showed growth.

I was not surprised with the overall results that younger generations are using the internet more often and for more diverse uses. However, older generations are slowly beginning to catch up. I would be interested to find out the results of this in another 10 years!