In search of the online fountain of vitality

Young people get all the credit for being technologically savvy. Sure, they can bop their heads to their iPods while text-messaging their friends and snapping photos on their cell phones.

    But baby boomers aren’t far behind their kids when it comes to technology – Bill Gates is 51 – and technology is changing the way boomers approach retirement.

“Boomers have looked at the way their parents grew older, and they’re not going to grow old the same way,´ said Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project, a Richmond, Va.-based marketing and consulting firm focused on baby boomers. “They want to stay active and vital, and they are using things like the Internet to do it.”

More and more businesses are marketing specifically to baby boomers, now between the ages of 42 and 60. The Internet is a key component to that marketing. An estimated 80 percent of baby boomers use the Internet, namely for information about health and travel.

“For a long time the boomer generation was labeled as the youth generation,” Thornhill said. “But they know they’re not young anymore. So what will drive them in the next stage of their lives? Not the search for the fountain of youth, but the search for the fountain of vitality.”

Searching for vitality means keeping up-to-date on new health information through the Internet and staying connected to friends and family through e-mail or social networks created specifically for the boomer generation. Consider eons.com, the MySpace.com-equivalent for the 50-plus population, launched in 2006 by the creator of monster.com.

“Previous generations have stepped aside when they retired and marginalized themselves by moving to Florida and losing touch with the rest of the world,” Thornhill said. “Boomers aren’t going to do that.”

Thornhill said the Internet will change people’s retirement experience the same way the Internet has changed everything. Grandmas will be able to keep in touch with their grandchildren across the country through instant-messaging and e-mail. Boomers will be able to move to a warmer climate but stay in touch remotely via the Internet.

Ultimately, boomers will change the way the generations after them will think about growing older. Boomers may not think they’re young anymore, but they don’t categorize themselves as old, either.

“They will forever change what it means to grow old in this country,” Thornhill said. “This is the first generation to get to age 60 knowing they still have a good 30 years ahead of them.”

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