Anyone else noticed how boring Facebook has become lately? Sometimes I log in and see fewer than 20 posts from the last 24 hours in my “ recent news feed”. It’s become so deathly quiet that sometimes days can pass before I feel the obligatory need to check in on the off-chance I’ve missed something important.

I’m an average user with over 100 friends on both sides of the globe. All are people I know, most of whom I would be happy to stop and chat with in the street. Yet recently my newsfeed has resembled a graveyard at 3am. Not as much content is being posted, yet people are still making friend connections, there are fewer status updates to comment on and there are certainly fewer photo albums to browse. Part of this could be explained by age – most of my connections are mid 20s to early 30s and now have different priorities – we’re more focussed on careers, are in settled relationships so there’s less gossip and many now have young families.

Interestingly there are few statistics on how much people of different ages are actually engaging with Facebook – Facebook boasts over 400 million members, with 60 million status updates posted each day. Yet this works out at a little over one update per week per user. There are a lot of figures floating around looking at growth rates, which don’t prove how much the site is actually used, and more looking at time spent on the site, which again, don’t show how much it’s actually being used. The average user spends around 55 minutes per day on Facebook – but I seriously doubt that’s 55 minutes actually looking at the site. My typical usage pattern is log in, skim the news feed, maybe update my status and then leave it running in the background while I get on with more interesting things – just in case someone wants to chat.

While Facebook may not be the most effective way to reach users like me online, it’s a good place to meet my mum. Older women have been the fastest growing demographic on the site for some time now, driven by the need to keep in touch with grown children too busy to visit/phone/email. (Sorry mum.) And unlike me and my ilk, our parents’ generation is more likely to spend time interacting with Facebook once they’re there. Anecdotally most of the annoying clutter in my newsfeed like quizzes, games and virtual “chain mail” is posted by aunts, uncles and parents of friends. Older women are more likely to play social games than any other users, and two thirds of those will play every day.

Taking this into account is Facebook really the best place for advertisers to be reaching out to consumers my age? Perhaps it’s of more use to brands targeting older consumers with more expendable income now the kids have flown the nest.

I don’t believe my generation is “moving on” and will always be an elusive audience for marketers, it’s a matter of us hovering in the background, getting on with living fulfilling lives and waiting for Facebook to develop something new and exciting that will draw us back. Until we get bored again.