Teens and college-age kids like Chrome. Their grandparents would rather use Internet Explorer.
That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one: a survey I recently conducted shows that approximately half of Americans 45 years or older prefer Internet Explorer, with the remainder of senior citizens opting for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Opera, in that order.
As you can see on the chart, the percentages are reversed when it comes to their Gen Y grandkids — Americans between 18 and 24 years old — who overwhelmingly use Chrome. About half of them prefer Chrome, followed by Firefox (30%), IE (25%), and Safari and Opera (3.6% each).
In addition, a breakdown by sex reveals that Safari gets more love from women than men, while the reverse is true for Firefox. (Clearly this pressing question deserves more investigation from other researchers. Is it because Firefox is more customizable? I didn’t ask about mobile browsers, so it isn’t a question of women preferring iPhones over Android, although this is an interesting question 
)
Here are a few other anecdotal tidbits about browser demographics:
-Rural users are the most likely to use Internet Explorer. Urban dwellers prefer Chrome.
-The midwestern U.S. was more likely to choose Internet Explorer than the west coast was.
Disclaimer: Once again I did this survey on my own time and money. This blog post solely represents my personal opinion, not my employer’s. This survey was conducted using Google consumer survey with 1,501 responses. The age breakdown is statistically significant, the gender split is not.