Families used to find a senior living community through a friend, a doctor or a brochure. Those still matter, but almost every family now checks what they heard against what they find online before they call. Two groups do most of that research: older adults looking for themselves, and adult children looking on behalf of a parent. They search differently, worry about different things and respond to different messages.
Knowing how each one researches tells you where your community needs to show up and what it needs to say when it does.
Baby boomers research for themselves
Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964, which puts them between 62 and 80 in 2026. That is the core independent living prospect, and increasingly the assisted living prospect too.
Pew Research Center’s surveys have tracked internet use and smartphone ownership among adults 65 and older rising steadily for more than a decade. The old assumption that “seniors aren’t online” was always shaky, and for this generation it is simply wrong. Many of them spent their working lives on email and spreadsheets.
Boomers researching for themselves tend to take their time. They read floor plans, compare what is included in the monthly fee, look for a calendar that suggests real social life, and want to know what happens if their health changes. They are not in a hurry, and they notice when a website talks down to them.
Two practical consequences for your site:
- Readability is not optional. Large, high-contrast text, plain language, and buttons big enough to tap. This helps everyone, and it is the difference between a page a 75-year-old finishes and one they close.
- Answers beat adjectives. “Vibrant lifestyle” tells a prospect nothing. A sample week, a starting price and a clear list of what the fee covers tell them a lot.
Many boomers are also the adult children in this story. A 62-year-old may be researching memory care for a mother in her late eighties while quietly reading about independent living for herself.
Where families look for information
The research journey now runs across five places, and most families touch several of them.
- Search engines. Google is still where most searches start: “assisted living near me,” “memory care [city],” “how much does independent living cost.” The searches change as the decision gets closer, and the four kinds of search that come before a move-in each need a different kind of page.
- AI assistants and AI Overviews. A growing share of early questions (“what is the difference between assisted living and memory care?”) now get answered by Google’s AI Overviews or by tools like ChatGPT before the family visits any website. Pew Research Center’s 2025 analysis of real browsing data found users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did. The practical response is to write pages that the AI answer cites rather than replaces: clear questions, direct first-sentence answers and facts a machine can lift.
- Paid referral services. A Place for Mom and Caring.com are not neutral review sites. They are referral services that earn a fee from communities when a family they refer moves in. Families often do not realize this. For operators, the referral aggregator math is worth understanding before deciding how much of your census to source that way.
- Reviews. Google reviews, and the reviews on directory listings, shape the shortlist. Families read the recent ones, and they read how you replied. Reviews are read by families, not algorithms, so the reply matters as much as the star rating.
- Your own website. Everything above sends the family back to you eventually. Virtual tours, care-level pages, a starting price and an easy way to book a tour are what convert that interest into a call.
Social media plays a supporting role. Facebook is widely used by both generations, and it is where a family goes to see whether the community looks like a place people actually enjoy living. It rarely starts the search, but it often confirms or undermines what the family found elsewhere.
The role of adult children
For assisted living and memory care especially, the adult child is often the person doing the research, filling in the form and arranging the tour. The parent may make the final decision, or share it, but the shortlist is frequently built by a son or daughter in their fifties or sixties, on a phone, in the evening, around a job.
That changes what a good inquiry experience looks like. The adult child wants to book a tour without phone tag, get a price range before investing an afternoon, and understand quickly whether the community can handle Mom’s specific needs.
It also means the parent and the child may both be researching, separately, and comparing notes. Your website has to work for both readers at once.
Why adult children start researching
The search usually starts with an event, not a plan:
- A health scare. A fall, a hospital stay or a new diagnosis turns a vague worry into a deadline.
- Isolation. A parent living alone after a spouse dies, or no longer driving, and seeing fewer people each month.
- Money and legal planning. Working out what care costs, what a parent can afford and what benefits might apply.
- Quality of life. Wanting a parent to be safe, comfortable and engaged, not just housed.
Each trigger carries a different level of urgency. A family facing a hospital discharge may need an answer this week. A family worried about isolation may take months. Your follow-up should match.
How to reach adult children
- Publish the content they are searching for. Guides such as “signs it may be time for assisted living” or “how to talk with a parent about moving,” written plainly and answered in the first paragraph.
- Show real life, with consent. Resident and family stories, staff introductions and day-in-the-life video do more than stock photography. Get written consent from every resident, or their representative, before they appear.
- Make the phone experience effortless. Fast pages, tap-to-call, and tour booking that works on a small screen.
- Use video for the questions photos cannot answer. Floor plan walkthroughs and short answers from your care team on common concerns.
- Let the creative do the targeting on Meta. Senior housing ads on Facebook and Instagram generally run in Meta’s Housing special ad category, which removes age, gender and ZIP-code targeting. You cannot target “adults 40 to 65.” Instead, write the ad for the adult child (“When Dad can’t manage the house anymore”) and let the message find them. Avoid copy that implies you know the viewer’s health condition.
The bottom line
Both generations research senior living online, and neither does it in one place. Families move between search, AI answers, paid referral services, reviews and your website, often over weeks or months. Communities that show up clearly in each of those places, answer the real questions directly and make the next step easy will earn more of the inquiries, tours and move-ins that follow.
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