Who loves tablets? It’s not young people.

When Apple introduced the first iPad six years ago, everyone knew it was a game-changer.

Tablets, predicted analysts, would transform the media world and become more ubiquitous than the smartphone. Kids would grow up not with books but with iPads. Laptops would become obsolete.

That hasn’t quite happened, of course—it was easy to get carried away with hyperbole at the time.

But what tablets have developed into has been just as fascinating. They’ve become not a tool of the young for social media and videos, but a tool of the slightly older, for reading, emailing and listening to podcasts.

Tablets seem to have been made for Generation X. They’re more conducive to older eyes for reading and watching video than smartphones.

And that slightly older skew is reflected in a new report from Nielsen, which examines media usage during fourth quarter of last year.

It finds that adults 35-44 use tablets more than any other age group, averaging three hours and 51 minutes per week.

Adults over 50 are second at three hours and 5 minutes.

Interestingly, Millennials and kids have the least amount of tablet usage, with 18-34s using them two hours and 36 minutes a week and kids using them two hours and 24 minutes.

Nearly half of 35-44s say they use tablets in a typical week, up from 38 percent last year. The most popular activity is surfing the web and using apps, but many in the demo also listen to audio, watch video and use the tablet for social networking.

Millennials are less likely to use their tablets for audio or social media, but equally likely to watch video.

Years ago, the disparity in tablet usage between Millennials and Generation X could certainly be explained to some degree by economics. Tablets used to be fairly expensive, but these days you can get a basic, off-brand tablet or Kindle Fire for less than $200.

Because of that, it’s become harder to explain Millennials’ lower engagement with the devices with lack of ownership because they’re too expensive.

Instead, it seems simply that Millennials prefer smartphones. While older users might find it difficult to read or watch video on smartphones, Millennials’ young eyes have no problem with that.

Tags: media usage, media use, millennials, nielsen, research, smartphones, tablets, who uses tablets