Analysing age and gender patterns in online usage over time

There is obviously a general trend of increase in all age groups.


What evidence is there that the digital divide in the UK is narrowing between:

a.                  young and old?

There are significant increases of around 30% in the two youngest ranges, this is mirrored in the 60-69 range but not so in the over 70's, with only an increase of 9%. Looked at another way you could say that for 70+ going from 3 to 12 percent is a 4 fold increase(?)

As far as the divide goes there is still significant different from the youngest ranges compared to the older ranges, both increasing but still a wide divide, even a slight widening in favour of the young.
 

b.                  men and women?

There is a general trend for men to be higher users than women until you look at women in the 16-19 range in more recent years, I would suggest that the rise of social-networks and mobile phones are the main leaders for this increase with young girls being ever more active in the use of these media.

Ofcom research shows that just over one fifth (22%) of adult internet users aged 16+ and almost half (49%) of children aged 8-17 who use the internet have set up their own profile on a social networking site. For adults, the likelihood of setting up a profile is highest among 16-24 year olds (54%) and decreases with age. (Ofcom report, 2008)


A lot of the conclusions above are very much governed by the way that statistics are looked at. Disraeli's saying that "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." is a phrase that I certainly hold true.


One thought that I had was that someone in the 16-19 range in 2001/2 would more than likely be part of the 20-29 range by 2007/8 and so on with those surveyed who are near the top of their age range in 2001/2. This means that there is a migration from one age group to another through the life of the study. I think that this potentially means that, taking 70+ as an example, the increase we see from 3% (2001/2) to 12% (2007/8) may be largely catered for by this migration - meaning that there are only a nominal number of new 70+ users during the period.