Oldsters flooding the Web

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 00:44

Business IT - Technology

The fastest-growing age group on the Internet in the U.S. and U.K. are those over 70, according to recent surveys.

The changing demographics were discussed at the World Wide Web conference getting underway in Madrid.

According to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 45 percent of 70-to-75-year-olds and 27 percent of those aged 76 and up went online in the U.S. last year.

Those figures are up from 26 percent and 17 percent, respectively, in 2005.

For those aged 64 and over, the most popular online application is email, and they don't do as much online shopping as younger users.

According to Andrew Arch of the World Wide Web Consortium, Britain has seen similar patterns of use.

The last frontier, though, seems to be social networking. Said Vicki Hanson of the School of Computing at Scotland's University of Dundee, "They are not on Twitter."