One 67-year-old woman starts and finishes her day on Facebook just as many teenagers do. A 20-something college student rushes to class and angrily tweets as he gets stuck behind a train.
The generation gap on social media sites that was once so extreme between young adults and senior citizens may be diminishing, but not in everyone's favor.
According to a recent study done by Princeton University, Facebook will lose 80 percent of users by 2017. Young teenagers are moving to platforms such as Instagram, while older people are sticking around, and, in many cases, are relatively new to the website.
About 43 percent of Americans age 65 and older use social networking sites, which is up from just one percent five years ago, according to the Pew Research Center.
"I use Facebook to keep up with my kids and grandkids," Sarah Jo Hardin, 67, said. "They don't live in the same place as me, so it is how I see what they are doing and to watch them continue to grow up."
Hardin believes this is one of the main reasons people around her age have begun adopting social media sites.
According to Carrie Brown-Smith, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Memphis, social media is something 18 to 29 year olds have grown up being a part of. In her opinion, making the transition onto the Internet is hard for some older people who are not open to change.
"I mean, I think it (generation gap) does exist to a certain extent," Brown-Smith said. "Facebook has a pretty heavy penetration rate among all demographics - even my grandma has one." Martin Key, a 73-year-old social media user, accesses Twitter so he can keep up with news and statistics from his favorite sports teams.
"I am a huge New York sports fan, so Twitter allows me to keep up with my teams," Key said. "My grandson introduced it to me and showed me how to use it and all the other stuff I needed to know."
In the past five years, the number of people between the ages of 30 to 49 using social media sites has increased 53 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.
"I use it (Facebook) to keep in contact with old friends from childhood, college and moving around for work," Rod Stringer, 48, said. "I also use it to play different games with friends on there."
The trend of parents and grandparents using Facebook has caused some kids to choose different social media sites.
"I don't post as much on Facebook because my whole family can see it," Justen Ketchum, 24, said. "It's not that I have something to hide from them, but I don't think they need to know everything."
Over 1.11 billion people are active on Facebook monthly and 48 percent of those users between the ages of 18 to 34 check their page as soon as they wake up.
"As soon as I wake up in the morning, I check Facebook, Twitter and Instagram," Kaitlyn Rose, 21, said. "If I don't look at them, I feel like I might miss a lot. I get a little anxious."
For some young people, the challenge of going extended periods of time without checking their phone seems like an unbearable struggle. However, not all college students feel as if they have to check or update their social media sites so frequently.
"I am just too busy. I can't check Facebook or other sites all the time," Ketchum said. "And, no one should share what they are doing every waking moment of their life with the Internet."
While younger people are often on the go, some older people have found more free time to spend at a desktop computer checking their Facebook profiles.
"I can spend hours and hours on Facebook," Hardin said. "I just start clicking on my friend's pages then other pages from there. And when I look up, I have been on there for three hours."
Over time, social media sites have had big hits that led them to fall off of the radar. MySpace was a huge site before Facebook pulled many users away. With up and coming social media platforms like Snapchat competing against Facebook-owned Instagram, competition is looming in the social media market once again.
From scrolling through social media to checking email, the issue seems not to be that young and old generations aren't together online, but that they are accessing these mediums in different ways.
For Ketchum, he can check his Internet presence or respond to an email all on his phone without ever sitting down at a computer - an easier option that allows him to save time and multitask.
"I pretty much only use my phone to check my Facebook, Twitter or anything else," Ketchum said. "Occasionally, I will use my laptop."
Stringer is an advocate of her computer and echoes the sentiment of the older generation.
"I have a Blackberry phone, but it is hard enough to text on it," Stringer said. "So, I just use my laptop to check my Facebook.
According to Brown-Smith, the social media generation gap is closing.
"With smart phones and tablets and Internet access almost everywhere, the huge difference in ages using social medias is going to continue to diminish," Brown-Smith said.
