The surge in aging Baby Boomers and wired seniors online is making waves in social networks, marketing, and mobile gadget design.

According to the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Survey, “larger percentages of older generations are online now than in the past, and they are doing more activities online,” such as searching for health information, emailing, shopping, and gaming. Wired seniors are also flocking to social networking sites to fight boredom, isolation and loneliness. Being connected to each other and to family in socnets is “a reason to keep on going,” according to web-savvy seniors interviewed in The New York Times.

Facebook Fades to Gray

Of course there are niche social networks for mature users to connect and communicate, but trending data indicates that Grandma and Grandpa are also using the sites most popular with Gen Y. According to Facebook’s own demographic data, in the previous six months there has been a significant shift in the site membership, such that the number of college users declined 20% and the number of facebooking highschoolers dipped 15%. During the same period however, the number of users over 55 years of age jumped from just under 1 million to almost 6 million. Analysts are describing this trend as the graying of Facebook.

Dot Boom: Social media marketing to the booming “older” population

With more mature users online for business and leisure pursuits, web marketers are taking notice. In their book on targeting the boomer generation, authors David Weight and Jonathan Boehman suggest that conventional advertising tactics will fail to produce results because boomer consumer behavior is unique, and the key to marketing effectiveness with this consumer segment is authentic engagement. Aging Boomers want to have meaningful connections to each other and the brands they adopt and identify with—so it is not surprising that the rise in social shopping sites coincides with this increasing online activity among “digital immigrants” (Marc Prensky’s term, defines in a pdf here).

The Mobile Generation Gap

However there are some serious generation gaps when it comes to digital mobile media use. In terms of cellphone adoption, texting, and mobile data usage, relatively few of those over age 65 participate, as compared with millennials and Gen Y. According to the Pew Research Center, just 6% of US seniors use a cellphone for most of their calls, while 65% of those aged 30 and younger use wireless telephones everyday. Similarly, ninety percent of teens and twenty-somethings text message, while only 11% of the 65-and-up demographic use SMS.

Incidentally, when the gray(ing) and silver surfers (50-65+) do purchase a mobile device from Apple, they are far more likely to pick the iPhone (16% of iPhone users are from this demographic) over the iPod Touch (only 7% of iPod Touch users are over age 50)—according to comScore data.

These market percentages would likely go up if there were more apps designed with seniors in mind—or at least marketed to this demographic and their adult children. For example, the eldergadget blog made an insightful point about a free iPhone home security app that could be repurposed to “monitor a senior’s well-being and alert caregivers” if something is amiss.

Of course, for seniors and aging Boomers to adopt an iPhone or any other handheld computing device, they have to feel confident that they can figure out how to use it. Sounds obvious, but last week the Best Buy Mobile survey of smartphone users found that half the respondents said they are very confused by the vast assortment of models and features when comparing different mobile phones. This feature- and function- creep is interfering with purchases.

Interestingly, three years ago the Jitterbug mobile phone was unveiled, a device purpose designed with aging Boomers in mind– meant to work intuitively, accessibly, and with a simplistic design (buttons say YES or NO rather than using icons, etc.—the original designer is interviewed here in BusinessWeek).

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