Demographics of the Web

Many news papers are reporting that Women under 65 now use the Internet more than men do citing a study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. See for example, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Women under 65 now use Internet more than men do.

This sounded interesting and so I decided to look at the report found at the Pew Internet & American Life Project website under Reports:Demographics. The lead paragraph of the report summary was a surprise: How Women and Men Use the Internet: Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. . The summary of the report presented there does not make the same statement as the traditional news media are reporting. In fact the report states "The percentage of women using the internet still lags slightly behind the percentage of men. Women under 30 and black women outpace their male peers. However, older women trail dramatically behind older men."

In this case the traditional media just plain got it wrong. A bit of careful reading of the report would have revealed that the age 59 dividing line is important because after that age the number of women using the Internet falls far behind men.

With the gap in genders closing on Internet use, the report is interesting becaused it details how differently men and women use the Internet.
Posted by WEBnME @ 1/05/2006 03:58:00 PM
Permanent Link: http://www.webnme.com/2006/01/demographics-of-web.asp
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