Pew Internet has a new report out today, Generations 2010, that looks at Americans’ daily use of the Internet. While some of the findings are just what you’d expect [more young people are accessing the Internet via mobile devices like phones and laptops? Gee!], other results of the study were somewhat unexpected.

Following up on last year’s first “Generations” study, Pew researchers found that Gen Xers [people aged 34-45] and older groups are making gains on the Internet-happy Millenials [18-33 year-olds], going online for more than just email and search.

Millenials lead the pack in use of social network sites like Facebook, but the oldest Americans [74 and up] are the fastest-growing user group, quadrupling from just 4% in 2008, to 16% this year. The percentage of all adult internet users who watch video online jumped 14 points in the past two years, from 52% in May 2008 to 66% in May 2010.

However, certain “key” internet activities are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These include email, search, getting news, buying things, making charitable donations, and downloading podcasts.

Participation in most of the online activities undertaken by Americans increased from 2009 – 2010, with one notable exception: blogging. According to the study’s authors:

Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline—a development that may be related to the quickly-growing popularity of social network sites. At the same time, however, blogging’s popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11% in late 2008 to 14% in 2010. Yet while the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.

Other interesting, sometimes surprising results of Pew’s study include the following:

• One-third [33%] of cell phone users access news on their phones.
• Nearly 7 in 10 grown-up Internet users have used the Internet to watch or download video.
• Nearly a quarter [22%] of adults have signed up to receive email or text message alerts about local issues.
• Only 62% of adults living with one or more chronic disease who go online, compared with 81% of adults reporting no chronic diseases.
• Forty percent of adults who use the internet, email or instant messaging, do so on a mobile phone, up from 32% in 2009.

The full and complete study is available online here.