Now that we’ve got a decent number of votes, I can honestly say the number of people 50 and older is very surprising to me. I assumed that would be the majority. 
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It’s shocking, really.
In many western countries we are the majority demographically. So all those youngsters should better be working hard to pay for our retirement income instead of playing silly games.
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whats is that? i will have never heard of it.
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My personal opinion:
Two the most influencing go-related things in western countries were hikaru no go as anime (made 2001-2003) and alphago beating LSD in 2016. It doesn’t surprise me that majority of ogs have been in their teens/early 20’s within last 16-18 years, since old people rarely watch anime (XD)
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“Rare minority” here 
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I suspect the older players in the West may have learned about the game, as I did, from Edward Lasker’s book, or they may have been board game completists who learned of it from a great compendium such as Bell’s Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. I was lucky to find Lasker’s book in my father’s library. He had learned to play in Japan during the occupation, but decided the game took too long, so he stuck with chess (in which he was very good). When I told him I had taken up the game again due to my discovery of the online community, he just smirked and shook his head, as if to say, “Well, the boy is entitled to a folly or two.”
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I’ve read from a respected chess historian that before one of Emmanuel Lasker’s World Chess Championship matches in the early 20th century he didn’t play any chess, but instead played a series of Go games against Edward Lasker.
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“25-34: 46.6%” forum generation!
No wonder this place feels nostalgic lol
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I’m just 11!
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So i guess its less than 0.1%?
(about the google statistics)
I fell lonely 
I am in the late 20is and started my go career when I was around 14-16 and read in a popular science article that the go AI had no chance against humans. It said that even a amateur could study hard for a year or so and be able to defeat the best AIs on the market.
How the go world has changed. 
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The whole AI thing is getting scary … on many levels… but thats another topic
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AI isn’t scary, it’s the people that make use of it that are scary
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My age is someswhere between 0 and 70
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Chinese chess (xiàngqí, 象棋) is much more popular in China than Go. It’s much more popular among Chinese people than Western chess is among Europeans or Americans. Things might have changed among young people since the arrival of videogames, but back in the 1990s, pretty much everybody living in mainland China knew how to play.
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I can’t say in 90’s if it was so popular, may be (makes me happy btw) but in 2005, you were lucky finding 1 or 2 players in a train to play with.
Someone said in eastern countries it’s popular between olders, well no, not in China, it’s popular in some extent between youngsters, because parents still believe it’s good for brain.
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Bit off topic.
Number of contestants of Nijmegen Go Tournament over the years:
1974: 19
1980: 64
1985: 100
1990: 64
1995: 61
2000: 48
2005: 88 (1)
2010: 46
2015: 47
2019: 42
(1) There was from 2003-2006 a sort of revival (caused by promotion of youth go?)
Conclusion:
- there was a peak in late eighties (one year even 104 participants)
- since then a steady decrease fading into consolidation.
Question:
- is this a worldwide trend?
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At least in germany it is the same trend.
I think the peak at 2005 is due to Hikaru no Go.
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