Kids likely to surf the Web. Men likely to be geeks.
So, younger people are more likely to play online games and blog than consumers over the age of 28. Yeah, that seems pretty obvious. That, and the finding that Internet users between the ages of 28 and 70 are more likely to use the Web for banking and travel reservations, came out in a Pew Internet & American Life Project release today.
Perhaps more interesting, and noted in today's New York Times, is a Pew study that came out a couple weeks ago. It eyed the differences in men's and women's Internet use. The Times article points out that married women are more likely to be occasional users of the Internet than single women. And parents with children under 18 are more likely candidates for Internet use than are individuals or couples with older children or no children.
But the gender study went beyond that, and the results are pretty interesting ...
Pew reports that younger women are more likely to go online than younger men, with 86 percent of women ages 18 to 29 jacked in, compared to 80 percent of men in that age group. The statistics swap with age. Only 21 percent of women 65 and older are online, compared to 34 percent of men at that age.
Men go online more frequently and are more likely to have high-speed connections at home. But women are catching up to men when it comes to Internet use as they send e-mail and look for maps, directions, and support for health, religion and other personal issues. Women are gaining on men in their use of government and religious Web sites, online product research and video or audio clips. Men favor the Web for weather, news, sports, financial and do-it-yourself information.
A final note - the study results, which are more than 50 pages, show that men are more tech-savvy and willing to describe themselves as geeks, while women are more worried about Internet security and criminal use of the Web.
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