I’ve recently attended a few social media conferences where speakers wrote off online engagement of seniors. Their assumptions about seniors, I believe, was based on out-dated stereotypes. Stereotypes that assume that just because you may have hit or surpassed the “magic age” of 65 that you have no digital connections.

It’s time for us each of us to give up those old stereotypes.

Just today, I received a retirement notice from a former boss who notified her network that she was giving up her landline in favor of her cell phone and Skype.

Kaiser Permanente also released survey data today that showed that Medicare beneficiaries are embracing the Internet to manage their health. From Jan Oldenburg: “The biggest surprise from the survey was discovering that the typical Kaiser Permanente Medicare beneficiary who is registered to use My Health Manager is very comfortable with computers, using the Internet daily and reviewing their medical record online a few times each month.”

If those results are convincing enough for you, perhaps I should introduce you to my 75+ year old parents. Between the two of them, they own three laptops (each has a Mac at home and they travel with a small PC to email their family), an iPhone and a Kindle.