Let us now banish that enduring image of the bumbling parents who can’t program their VCR and must beg their teenager for help. It turns out that the middle-age demographic stands ready to lead the digital revolution.

When it comes to listening to music on iPods, blogging, downloading podcasts, joining Facebook, and using Twitter, the over-35 crowd is adopting everything from social media to consumer electronics at a faster rate than their Generation Y (ages 18 to 24) counterparts.

These figures challenge some deeply held stereotypes about technology and age. Tech companies, often obsessed with designing for youth and hiring young, should take heed of this emerging powerhouse to think differently about their products, and where growth and opportunity may be found.

But in truth, the most important implication is this: Although I recently turned 40, I am not necessarily doomed to become a technological dinosaur.

Yes!

If you were watching a YouTube video of me while I was writing this, I’d be doing a jig and pretending to spike the ball in the end zone. But as I’m not one to gloat, let’s just calmly look inside some of the data and what I think it means.

The first report that caught my eye came from Accenture, under the somewhat low-key title “Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report 2009.” But in the annual report, which surveyed 3,000 adults, was this fascinating point:

“Baby boomers are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than the younger generation.”

Now, Accenture defines baby boomers as 45 years and older, so I’m not technically in their ranks. I officially belong to Generation X. And to be fair, that “younger generation,” dubbed Generation Y, can still claim that the percentage of their ranks using these services is higher than the boomers.

But that gap is closing rapidly, in part because adoption among boomers has accelerated, and in part because, for reasons that are unclear, the adoption rates among Gen Y is flat or declining. For example:

Over the past year, the percentage of boomers listening to podcasts or reading blogs jumped 67 percent, to 26 percent. The percentage of Generation Y stayed flat at 45 percent.

During the same period, the percentage of boomers watching or posting videos online climbed 35 percent, to 36 percent. The percentage of Generation Y doing the same dropped almost 2 percent to 67 percent.

Finally, the percentage of boomers playing mobile video games climbed 52 percent to 13 percent. The percentage of Generation Y climbed just under 2 percent to 45 percent. “Boomers are a lot more hip to technologies than we give them credit for,” said Kumu Puri, Accenture’s lead executive for the Consumer Technology industry group and author of their study. But it’s not just gadgets and multimedia where the shift of momentum is occurring. Social media is also becoming fertile ground for the middle-aged:

According to Inside Facebook, a Web site that reports on the social networking king, the fastest-growing segment of users over the past 60 days is people over 35 (that’s me!). While the biggest segment of members are still 18 to 25 (19.5 million), there are now 13.4 million members who are 35 to 54 — a figure that ballooned 276 percent over the past six months.