It’s no surprise. Time shifting is for the young. A study by the Nielsen company found that younger adult TV viewers are 2.5 times more likely to timeshift than older viewers.

In fact, 50% of older viewers said would “do nothing or wait for reruns” for shows they missed. Do nothing? Do they not care about the latest Lost or Heroes episodes?

And think about it. Reruns? How often do you keep track of reruns and when they might come back on the air? Nobody likes reruns, unless you happen to miss an episode? And unless you’re some sort of fanatic (or a younger TV viewer) you’ll probably be OK with missing a show.

In fact, reruns are dying. They’re being replaced by DVRs, iTunes/iPods, Start Over on-demand features on cable and streaming via the Internet.

It’s almost as if the TV networks don’t really care about repeats, since they are putting recently aired shows on the Internet for free. Or by paid download via iTunes (or even NetFlix, which is where I go to catch up on Heroes).

Anyway, younger viewers are more hip to technology, have more time to waste hunting down their favorite shows and have grown up with online TV viewing.

The study also found that 50% went to ABC.com more than any other TV site when looking for catching up on shows. NBC.com and CBS.com were next.

Bonus: Nielsen’s PDF of the Study Results.